


or the path the walker

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: does the walker choose the path [3]
Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Ancelstierre (Old Kingdom), Angst and Romance, Bad Parenting, Character Death, Charter Magic, Culture Shock, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Families of Choice, Fate & Destiny, Free Magic, Good Intentions: Bad Outcomes, Grief/Mourning, Homecoming, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Necromancy, Slow Burn, The Great Charters, Unconventional Families, Worldbuilding, Wyverley College, the wall - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 76,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?After the death of Queen Padmé, the Old Kingdom is sinking into ruin. The Regent Mon Mothma can't control the guilds, her predecessors have been murdered by a weapon made of Free Magic within the walls of the Palace itself, and the Abhorsen - a reclusive widower since the death of his wife - has disappeared. All that stands between the Old Kingdom and total devastation is the Abhorsen-in-Waiting.Her name is Jyn.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It has taken a) a village and b) the best part of two years to bring this fic to life (no, I'm not kidding, and I wish I was: I checked the document creation information, and I made it in _August 2017_ ). Incognitajones has been here from the beginning, the most patient of listeners, the most careful of plot-outline-readers. Brynnmclean, too, has been the most supportive of cheerleaders - I owe a particular debt to them for assistance with Chirrut. Cosmonauthill helped me chase the end of the fic, and beta'd the whole thing. Stella made me the most stunning cover.
> 
> You guys. I'm so proud to be here at last and I couldn't have done any of it without you.
> 
> The posting schedule, as usual, will be Sunday/Tuesday/Friday, and for those of you who know Star Wars rather than Old Kingdom, here is a brief primer to the world: 
> 
> _There are two kinds of magic: Free Magic, which is dangerous and corrosive, and Charter Magic, which can also be dangerous, but is bound by symbols, so is more manageable. In the Old Kingdom, most people use Charter Magic as part of their day-to-day life, and as protection from the Dead (which can be raised by necromancers using Free Magic) and Free Magic creatures. The Charter was created by five demigods - the Five Great Charters. One of these demigods gave their power to the royal line, one gave their power to the Abhorsens (Jyn's family: the only necromancers who can use Charter Magic, and who are there to put the Dead back where they came from), and one gave their power to the Daughters of the Clayr (seers: 95% female in the books). The remaining two put their power into great works like Charter stones, which act as wellsprings of the Charter for people to draw on, and the Wall, which marks the border between the Old Kingdom and the country next door, which is Ancelstierre. Ancelstierre is a republic, roughly 1920s level of technology, and views its neighbour with Suspicion. It's also a nearly totally magic-free zone, so the Dead are much harder to raise except in the extreme north, and it's a lot safer. Which is why Sabriel, in the books, and Jyn, in this fic, were sent there for safekeeping._

The woman and the girl hurried up the steep, shale-ridden slopes of the Old Kingdom’s northern reaches, following a path that glowed faintly with Charter marks in the dying light. The girl was panting, hurrying to keep up as her mother pushed her on with one hand, and the woman had a sword drawn and a spell haloed around its tip. The woman kept glancing back at two slinking, misty figures glowing blue and stinking of hot metal, following them slowly. Too slowly.   
  
In the distance, a cry resounded - the guttural howl of a Mordicant in pain, threaded through with the sound of bells. But there were other howls and cries, too, and the sound of the bells was very faint now. It resounded in Lyra Erso’s bones rather than her eardrums.   
  
She risked a look up the path, and saw what she had been hoping for: more solid rock, safer than the treacherous shale, and cover: caves and boulders and crevices. Plenty for a child to hide in for a very long time, if need be. Until the dawn, even.    
  
Lyra did not waste time wondering how long she could hold two Hish off, or if her daughter would have gone from Abhorsen-in-Waiting to Abhorsen by the time the sun rose. She pulled Jyn to a halt and ripped the Charter Mage’s medallion from round her neck, dropping to her knees and draping the chain around her daughter’s neck.   
  
“Jyn, listen to me,” she said. “I love you. I need you to run.”   
  
“Mama -”   
  
“Trust the Charter,” Lyra said, and kissed her daughter’s forehead, pulling her into a rough, one-armed hug and patting the medallion. “And run. Just run!”   
  
Jyn went, reluctant but obedient, and Lyra raised her sword and turned to block the path. She tipped the spell from the end of her sword into her palm, where it burned with promise, and watched the Hish approach.   
  
They came slowly, and darkness fell. 


	2. Chapter 2

The arrival of a mysterious officer from the Old Kingdom, asking for Jyn Erso, was such an event that the entire school knew his name, his background, and a forensically detailed description well before Jyn herself received an official summons to the visitors’ sitting room. The young ladies of Wyverley College were not really supposed to entertain male guests they were not related to, especially not conspicuous ones; any masculine interlopers should at least have the grace to be painfully normal. It was obvious to Jyn the instant that she entered the sitting room that Captain Andor was not normal by any Ancelstierran standards, and she regretfully banished the thought that he might be some kind of impostor. His clothes, Charter mark and bearing looked authentic, and - most telling of all - Mrs. Umbrade was looking at him like he was a tin of cat's-meat in the pantry.   
  
(Mind you, Jyn would later think, at least she was only looking at him. Saw would probably have shot him on sight.)   
  
The headmistress let out a slight, noiseless sigh as Jyn caught her eye - Jyn knew what she was thinking:  _ brush your hair and tie it up properly, Jyn, straighten your socks, if you won’t cover your Charter mark at least try not to flaunt it, and please, dear, mend that rip in your djibbah, I know you haven’t noticed it yet  _ \- and rose to her feet.   
  
“Miss Erso,” Mrs Umbrade said. “A guest from the Old Kingdom for you. He says he has an urgent message.” Mrs Umbrade’s eyes cut sideways, and Jyn inspected the stranger: medium height, straight black hair too long for the fashion in Ancelstierre, Charter mark, gambeson and hauberk and a sword, the Regents’ emblazon and an unforgiving face. “For your ears only. I shall be just outside.”   
  
Jyn nodded.   
  
Mrs Umbrade let herself out, and Jyn turned her eyes to the stranger, who rose to his feet, brought his heels smartly together and saluted.   
  
“Who are you?” Jyn said.    
  
“Captain Cassian Andor,” said the stranger, “of the Royal Guard. And you are the Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”   
  
The back of Jyn’s neck prickled, and she felt a river that wasn’t there lap around her feet. “I am,” she said, “although around here, most people call me Jyn Erso, and if you aren’t familiar with Ancelstierran norms, you should know that they’ll expect you to call me Miss Erso.” She took a breath. “Why didn’t you go to my godfather, if you had a message for me? The headmistress has an arrangement with my family.”   
  
“My orders were to bring the message directly to you,” Captain Andor said. Jyn disliked him already. “Nothing in writing.”   
  
“Orders from who?” she said.   
  
“The Regent.”   
  
Jyn stared at him for a moment. “Prove it,” she said, eventually.   
  
Captain Andor removed a roll of parchment from his pocket, and opened a window so that a strong north breeze could blow in, ruffling the curtains and Jyn’s untidy hair. He laid the parchment down on the table, and Jyn touched her Charter mark with two fingers, then pressed them onto the symbol marked on the parchment; it flashed with fire as she did so, and a light, clear, cool voice echoed through the room.    
  
When it had finished, Jyn rolled up the parchment and stuffed it into the pocket of her djibbah alongside some other useful odds and ends, without once taking her eyes off Captain Andor. “Say I believe you. What’s the message?”   
  
“When were you last in contact with your father?”   
  
Jyn blinked, her mouth falling open slightly in shock. There was a long moment of silence in which the only thing that moved was the breeze, playing over the soft furnishings.    
  
Jyn strode to the door. She opened it. “Mrs Umbrade. I need to go down to the village to see my godfather.” She swallowed. “It’s possible I will need to return to the Old Kingdom for a while. My father is… sick.”    
  


***

  
Mrs Umbrade knew that Major Samuel Gerrera, who lived down in the village of Wyverley as a pleasant retirement spot where he could keep champion roses and an eye on his goddaughter at the same time, had taught Jyn to drive. But she had, up till now, turned a blind eye to it. Jyn had been surprised when Mrs Umbrade didn’t just sanction her taking the school’s tiny rackety car into Wyverley, she suggested it - and moreover suggested that Jyn did not need to bring it back, as the groundskeeper could pick it up the next morning when he went in to fetch the post.  
  
Jyn took this for the dismissal it was, and packed everything important before she left. Mrs Umbrade was kind enough, and had been patient with Jyn, but she would certainly prefer to avoid any hint of scandal or unrest - and the Old Kingdom, in Ancelstierre, promised both.  
  
“Why do you want to know?” she said, once she was steering the car through country lanes. “About my father? I haven’t spoken to him in person for… a year. The last message was six months ago.”  
  
She braked for a farmer crossing with sheep, furiously enough that Captain Andor jerked in his seat, but his face did not change.  
  
“Nobody has heard from him for months,” he said coolly. “The House is deserted, he has not been seen at the Wallmakers’ town or in Belisaere, and the Clayr have not Seen him in person or otherwise since he left the Glacier in June. One of the young Wallmakers, a protégé of his - maybe you know him: Bodhi Rook -”  
  
Jyn pretended to be concentrating on the road. She had never heard of anyone called Bodhi Rook, but then, her conversations with her father hadn’t been extensive since her mother died and she was sent to Wyverley.   
  
“- has given us some… potentially suggestive information.”  
  
Jyn steered through Wyverley village and off into its eastern outskirts. Her godfather’s cottage was not easy to find. Saw liked it that way, more than he liked the roses that surrounded it, which were as much an attempt at proving his harmlessness to a sceptical village - and a blind for training strong, spiny plants over any part of his house that might be vulnerable to intruders - as anything else. It was a dark, squat little place; Jyn suspected that it concealed rising damp as well as secrets. The isolation probably wasn't necessary to ensure privacy, since most of the Bain townsfolk had absolutely no desire to interfere with Saw's everyday doings: he hadn't passed as harmless Major Samuel Gerrera (ret'd) for long. Jyn knew from the few, privileged day girls she had befriended that Saw’s Army nickname and long service in the Crossing Point Scouts were widely known, as were the shadowy individuals who visited him at all hours, dressed in Old Kingdom attire or ill-suited Ancelstierran clothes. His habit of setting his foul-tempered mongrel on the local urchins when they went for the gnarled apple trees behind his cottage did not help.   
  
It didn’t trouble Saw, who was not social, and considered that the peace and quiet he got from his alarmed neighbours was a useful opportunity to do things like teach Jyn how to shoot and swear and drive like a soldier, and use a sword like a Crossing Point Scout.   
  
Jyn parked the car in the lane. “You’d better stay here,” she said to Captain Andor. “I don’t know if he’s in. And he doesn’t like strangers.”  
  
She shut the car door behind her without waiting for Captain Andor’s reply, and then let herself in at the gate. Gullet began to bark almost as soon as Jyn approached the front door, which told her that Saw wasn’t at the hospital in Bain, terrorising the doctors.   
  
Saw opened the door to her, and Jyn tried to smile. He never seemed to change much from visit to visit: same suspicious visionary’s eyes, same majestic tangle of black hair turning grey, same haze of menthol cigarettes, same cane he leant on heavily, same rasping breath and rudimentary breathing apparatus. But there was no denying that he was getting older and sicker with every passing year, and his cough was getting worse all the time. Stubbornly, Saw carried on life much as usual, complete with mysterious comings and goings, walks with Gullet, and weekend fishing trips. But these days Gullet’s walks were shorter, the mysterious comings and goings less frequent, and Jyn carried the rods and tackle.

  
“Jyn,” Saw said, hard face lightening as his grip on Gullet loosened; Gullet knew her and didn’t like her, but knew better than to attack. “What’s wrong?”   
  
“A man from the Old Kingdom came to see me today,” Jyn said. “At school. He says my father is missing.”   
  
“But he’s not dead,” Saw said, eyes narrowing.   
  
“He can’t be,” Jyn said. “I haven’t got the bells.”   
  
“You might not be the Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” Saw offered.    
  
Jyn chewed her lower lip. “Then who is? I don’t have any cousins on that side. At least - none close.”   
  
Saw nodded an acknowledgement, and looked down at his feet in their heavy supportive boots. “Why didn’t this man come to me?”   
  
“I don’t know. He said he had orders to come directly to me.”   
  
Gullet leapt in Saw’s loose grip, and Jyn heard a car door slam. She turned around as Saw looked over her shoulder, and saw Captain Andor with his hand on the gate. Jyn glowered.   
  
“I can ask him myself,” Saw said, and when Jyn heard how grim he was she smiled.   
  


 

Saw interrogated Captain Andor while Jyn stood in the shadows near the top of the staircase, listening carefully as she changed into the Old Kingdom clothes and buckled on the weapons Saw kept in a chest for her. The walls did little to block sound, and Saw had taken Captain Andor into the front room rather than the kitchen - Gullet growling and jumping at his heels - so the man’s words would carry better.   
  
He didn’t say anything much. Whoever had told him to come straight to Wyverley College had also taught him to avoid questioning very effectively. Jyn had just pulled on her padded blue gambeson with the Abhorsen keys stitched into it, and was bending to lace on her boots, when he finally volunteered a piece of useful information.   
  
“The Abhorsen is… erratic, and has been for years. His disappearance is cause for alarm, and we have recently heard some concerning details from an apprentice of his who came forward when the Abhorsen neither attended a planned meeting nor left a message.”   
  
Saw grunted. It was Jyn’s mother he’d liked, Jyn knew; Lyra Erso, Charter mage and healer, born in the Borderlands and a little bit wild. It had been Lyra who had Charter-baptised Saw, in the middle of a battle, and in Saw’s conversations about Jyn’s parents Saw had always preferred her to Galen, who could be obscure, difficult and superior. He wouldn’t find it difficult to believe the worst of Galen.   
  
“That’s nothing new,” Saw said finally, surprising Jyn. “Abhorsens come, Abhorsens go, you don’t hang around waiting for a bloody printed invitation to tea.”   
  
“Usually it is possible to find the Abhorsen, though.”    
  
“Not this time?”   
  
“Not this time. The Regent had wondered if he was dead or incapacitated. The Abhorsen has not been seen much at court, and he has turned… secretive.”   
  
Saw snorted, and it turned into a coughing fit. “You need to live a bit longer, captain. Meet a few more Abhorsens. They all play their cards close to their chest.”   
  
There was a pause. Jyn released her laces in favour of untangling the long chain she kept her mother’s Charter medallion on; it had caught on a protruding boot buckle.    
  
“Apprentice?” Saw said finally. “Jyn’s his apprentice.”   
  
“Not an Abhorsen apprentice. A Wallmaker.”   
  
Jyn, straightening up, overbalanced and caught herself on the banister before she fell down the stairs. She shoved some strands of her hair behind her ears distractedly, and stared into the pool of light spilling out of the front room. She couldn’t see either man from here. She had no way of gauging what was and was not true, especially not when her mind was competing with the small squirming something hurting deep in her chest.   
  
Her father had chosen an apprentice. He hadn’t chosen her. That was obvious every day he failed to meet her eyes.   
  
Jyn took a deep breath, and ran her fingers over the cold metal of the pan pipes secured by a special pocket on her long jerkin, heavily sewn with protective, Charter-spelled plates of gethre. She tucked her mother’s medallion into the inside of her shirt, feeling it drop down to rest cool and grounding against her sternum, and walked downstairs.   
  
At least Lyra had loved her; Jyn had the proof of that every day, in the medallion Lyra had wound round her neck, before kissing her Charter mark and telling her to run.   
  
Saw and Captain Andor looked up when she walked in, and both of them looked unnaturally blank. Gullet was crouched at Saw’s feet, by the overstuffed and fraying armchair Saw rested in, growling softly at Captain Andor.   
  
Captain Andor’s eyes went straight to her chest. “You don’t wear the bells,” he said.   
  
“I don’t,” Jyn said coolly. “My father’s still alive. They haven’t come to me.”   
  
“Have you finished _ The Book of the Dead _ ?” Captain Andor demanded, and there was something in his sharp eyes that might have been a mean kind of concern, a thoughtlessness in his revealed knowledge of a book that should have been kept secret that almost suggested panic.   
  
Saw removed a gun from between the cushions of his armchair and whistled at Gullet, who rose from his crouch to prowl by Andor’s feet, snarling. Jyn drew her sword.   
  
“How do you know about _ The Book of the Dead _ ?” she said, quiet and menacing.   
  
“I’ve studied at the Clayr’s Glacier,” Captain Andor said. “It was mentioned to me.”   
  
Jyn advanced on him, sword drawn, and held out two fingers of her left hand. He held still while she tested his mark, her sword at his throat, and the golden fire of the Charter surrounded her; then she withdrew.   
  
There was a tiny trickle of blood winding down his neck, and Jyn wasn’t sorry.    
  
“Clean Charter mark,” she said to Saw, who laid the gun down but did not call Gullet off.   
  
“There are other kinds of treachery,” Saw warned.   
  
“I know,” Jyn said, and did not sheathe the sword. She looked at Cassian. “I have read  _ The Book of the Dead _ . Since you ask.” She didn’t think she’d learnt everything there was to learn - her father had given her chapters at a time, during their infrequent meetings - and Jyn was sure either he or the book had held something back, the same way her father always held himself back, telling her few stories of his actual work as Abhorsen or his life, keeping at a distance. But she had at least got to the back cover.   
  
_ Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker? _ Jyn wondered what path her feet had been set on now.   
  
“But you haven’t walked in Death,” Cassian said, looking at her shrewdly.   
  
“I have,” Jyn corrected, wearily. “That change in colouring… it’s gradual.”    
  
She thought of what he would see when he looked at her - what she had seen in the tiny, spotted mirror she had glimpsed herself in, changing out of her school uniform. Dark brown hair and a rounded face, with flat high cheekbones and dark grey eyes, straightforward brows and pale skin. He wasn’t to know that the colour in her cheeks had been draining since the day she first walked in Death as a child, or that her eyes had once been greener, her hair lighter. Her father had had the same colouring once, as a boy, before he’d become Abhorsen-in-Waiting; when Death had leached the colour from him, though, it had turned his eyes icy grey, not coal black. Jyn welcomed the darkening of her colouring - it made her look more and more like Lyra, whose eyes and hair had been nearly as dark as if she’d walked in Death herself - but not so much that she would step into Death for no reason at all.    
  
“My apologies,” Captain Andor said, not sounding particularly apologetic.    
  
“Don’t lie,” Jyn said. “You aren’t sorry.” She sheathed her sword. “What do you think happened to my father? You came here to look for his successor, not take his daughter home.”   
  
Captain Andor said nothing for a long moment. Then, eventually, as Saw’s eyes narrowed and his hands hovered over the gun, Captain Andor said:   
  
“You are aware of the necromancer called the Emperor.”   
  
Jyn nodded slowly.   
  
“What do you know about a man called Orson Krennic?”


	3. Chapter 3

Orson Krennic. _ Orson Krennic _ . The name rang in Jyn’s head as she presented her documents bad-temperedly at the Wall, too distracted to show more than the bare minimum of courtesy. Her accent and the authority of her passport meant she was shown through rather than obstructed in response to her bad manners, and Jyn didn't notice any abruptness or the sympathetic look the Scout who had scanned her papers gave Captain Andor, but only years of reprimands from Wyverley's patient teachers stopped her snapping when she was informed that Colonel Raddus wanted to see her before she crossed.    
  
"Very well," Jyn said, instead. In the Perimeter Zone, such things weren't optional.   
  
The Scout told off a private to lead them to Colonel Raddus's dugout. Jyn ignored Captain Andor as she walked through the network of trenches, over the duckboards keeping their feet mostly out of the mud; now she'd been forced to think about her surroundings, instead of dwelling angrily on the little she remembered of the smooth man in the grey cloak, she noticed that Death hung around this place like mist off the sea. It was so close she could have poked a finger through the air and slipped a hand into the river itself. Its chill hung off the barbed wire, pooled in the pickets, and yet in the distance Jyn felt the broad warmth of the Wall.    
  
She could also hear whistling.   
  
"What's that noise?" she asked.   
  
"The flutes, miss. Wind flutes." The private pointed at sticks among the barbed wire, which she had previously assumed were twigs. "They sing when the wind's from the north, miss."   
  
The trench they were in brought them close to a rill of barbed wire hung with those flutes; as they drew closer Jyn could see more.   
  
"I need to take a closer look at one of them," she said to the private. "There may be a problem Colonel Raddus should be made aware of."   
  
The private visibly struggled with himself, but then said: "All right, miss, just for a moment - but don't touch them, they're cursed."   
  
"I think they're actually protecting you from a curse," Jyn said, following the duckboards until she got close enough to the barbed wire to see the flute clearly. A rough wooden tube marked with a distinct pattern of holes and carvings, flaring with the Charter every time the wind rattled it, it was exactly like an illustration her father had once shown her in one of his own books:  _ Practical Binding and Safekeeping _ . Of course, probably nobody but an Abhorsen or a Wallmaker would be able to make more than two or three at a time, but if you could get together enough good Charter mages to make a reasonable number it was a simple and straightforward method of protecting a community at special risk. Her father must have made hundreds. And he'd signed them all  _ 52A _ .   
  
"Huh," Jyn said, and went back to Captain Andor and the Scout.   
  
Captain Andor raised his eyebrows at her. He had his hand on the pommel of his sword, and this close to the Wall his Charter mark was flaring with every latent breeze.    
  
"Nothing," Jyn said, and looked at the Scout, who seemed a bit unnerved but nonetheless coughed and extended a hand, wordlessly indicating the path.    
  
He led them along for another few minutes, and then relinquished them to an orderly, who knocked on a dugout door, exchanged a few words, and then ushered them into Colonel Raddus's office.   
  
The dugout was not a large one, nor was the ceiling high; Captain Andor ducked his head to get in. Colonel Raddus was not large himself, a stocky man with light brown skin heavily mottled and weathered by his service, a prominent nose, and shrewd, rather bulbous eyes. He rose to his feet and greeted them, then called for tea. The orderly ran around with a kettle. Jyn and Captain Andor took seats by the desk, and waited while Colonel Raddus settled himself.   
  
"You must be Abhorsen's daughter," Colonel Raddus said finally. "It's been many long years since we've seen you here."   
  
"My father sent me to school in Ancelstierre," Jyn said.   
  
"Safer, no doubt."   
  
Jyn inclined her head. Saw had told her enough about her childhood home for her to know she probably was safer in Ancelstierre. Quite apart from anything else, the dead rarely left their graves on this side of the border.   
  
"Do you expect to meet him on the other side of the Wall? We had a patrol come in not an hour ago and they reported no sighting of him, but Galen has a remarkable way of turning up when he's not expected."    
  
The tea arrived, along with some rather meanly iced biscuits, and Colonel Raddus looked at it politely as if he expected Jyn to pour. Jyn made three cups of tea, and received murmured thanks from both men.   
  
"I'm not," Jyn said. "The reason I'm crossing the Wall is because my father's... gone missing."   
  
"Missing?" Raddus sounded alarmed.    
  
"He hasn't been seen for some few months," Captain Andor said, in possibly an overly soothing tone. "The Abhorsen is in the habit of travelling without notifying his friends or family. That is not unusual."   
  
Raddus gave Captain Andor a narrow-eyed look, and then turned to Jyn. "My dear girl -"   
  
"He's missed an appointment," Jyn said, and added defiantly: "I'm not worried. But I might be the only person in the Kingdom who can find him, so I'd better go looking."   
  
Raddus didn’t seem altogether comforted. "Your father has been a good friend to me - and he's saved a lot of Scouts' lives. If there's anything I can do..."   
  
"All that's necessary is for me to cross the Wall," Jyn said, and added rather belatedly - "Thank you. It's very kind of you to offer."   
  
"Miss Erso, if you knew what your father has done for this garrison..."   
  
"The wind flutes," Jyn said. "He made you the wind flutes."   
  
"You recognised them," Raddus said, sounding unsurprised. "Yes, that was one of the things he did for us. You, I assume, can sense the same things he did."   
  
Jyn nodded.   
  
"Then you'll realise that this is no longer a good place to keep the Crossing Point. It used to be moved every ten years, but thirty years ago the bean-counters in Corvere decided that was a waste of money." Raddus sighed shortly. "Fifteen years ago I was a captain here, and the weight of death had grown so much that... well. Things came out of the ground. Men who were not burned rose from the grave - now we burn everyone. We were dying. And then my patrol picked up your father, who went to old General Ackbar and spoke with him." Raddus settled back in his old leather chair, which creaked ominously. "He stayed for two weeks. Whittled flute after flute by day. Fought the Dead by night. And then, after we'd had a single night without those bloody - excuse me, miss - revenants, he passed out and slept for three days. But only when everyone else had had a chance to rest." He paused, and then into the silence, he said: "A good man."   
  
Jyn inclined her head again. Her Charter medallion had warmed under her clothes, and its solid, familiar weight rolled against her rib cage.    
  
"He's still alive," Jyn said. "I know it. But he may be in trouble."   
  
"All I can say is I hope not."   
  
Jyn sipped at her tea. Colonel Raddus was squinting at her, now that his story was over. Jyn waited for whatever it was he felt he had to say.   
  
"You're very young," he said finally, "to be crossing the Wall without your father."   
  
Jyn's temper flared, and she sat firmly on it. "I don't really have a choice," she said, and then, hating every word, added: "And as you can see, I am not unescorted."   
  
Colonel Raddus' eyes fell on Captain Andor. Jyn took a mean pleasure in the fact that he looked only slightly reassured.   
  
"I have orders from Regent Mothma herself to assist the Abhorsen-in-Waiting to the fullest extent of my abilities," Captain Andor said blandly, managing to look and sound both official and officious.   
  
"Hmm," said Colonel Raddus.   
  
"I'm not defenceless," Jyn said, straightening a little. "I don't know if you remember Major Gerrera?"   
  
"Major Ge- Saw? Old Saw? Ah yes; of course." Colonel Raddus looked at her with new eyes, which was highly gratifying. “He knew both your parents well, I think.”

  
"They appointed him my godfather," Jyn said, and smiled. "He's a very educational sort of person. He was a close friend of my mother’s, and my parents asked him to act as my guardian while I was at Wyverley."   
  
"Ye gods," Colonel Raddus said reflectively. "The parents' evenings must have been quite something."   
  
Jyn grinned. It didn’t fit with the demure persona Wyverley expected from her, but maybe it suited someone who was about to plunge into a kingdom of magic and murder and the dead who would not lie quiet.    
  
Colonel Raddus turned over a couple of pages of her passport. "I have no choice but to let you go, of course. And any child of Galen's - or godchild of Saw's - can probably take care of herself. But do be careful."   
  
Jyn nodded.    
  
Colonel Raddus got up and yelled for an orderly. "Party of two, Barnes - to cross."   
  
He escorted them to the Wall himself, making polite small talk about Jyn's studies and anything Captain Andor was willing to talk about (which was not much). Snow began to fall on the other side of the Wall as Jyn stood with him at the gaping doorway in the Wall that had once been a gate, untouched by the Ancelstierran explosives that had splintered heavy oak and iron round it. She tucked her grey-green scarf more securely around her neck, and watched the crossing patrol form up ahead of them.   
  
"Charter guide your path, Abhorsen-in-Waiting," Colonel Raddus said. He was watching the snow and his men, but when he had spoken he turned and smiled at her. He was wearing a helmet pulled low over his forehead, but still, just beneath it, the Charter mark flickered. "And remember me to your father."    
  
"I will," Jyn said, strapping on her skis. Captain Andor, entirely typically, was already ready to go. "Thank you for the tea, Colonel Raddus." She paused as she thought of something which hit her stomach like lead. "And if anything happens..."   
  
"Anything?" Colonel Raddus prompted her after a long moment, frowning.   
  
Jyn swallowed. "I'll be back to replace your wind flutes before the following full moon."   
  
She saw understanding spread over his face, hard as concrete, and he nodded very slightly and saluted her.    
  
She bowed her head to him, and turned her face to the Kingdom.   


  
  
The reminder of the grey-cloaked Orson Krennic and the possibly mortal danger her father was probably in put her back into her foul mood, and she set a deliberately punishing pace, trying to get that name out of her head. Captain Andor was smart enough to say nothing for the long hours they spent heading into deeper into the Old Kingdom, not even to question how a girl who had spent most of her life buried in Ancelstierre knew how to find Abhorsen’s House, or even if that was where she was going.    
  
Jyn’s mouth twisted and stayed twisted as they found a dead patrol of Scouts strung out along the road to the bridge, and her face only grew more grim as they burnt the bodies and listened to the message left behind. Free Magic creatures and Dead, come from behind; they hadn’t been able to double back and flee to the Wall, to some spot where a south wind might at least have made it possible for their distress flares to fly.    
  
Free Magic creatures liked ambushes, as a general rule. That was how Jyn’s mother had died.    
  
Nobody had ever been able to prove that Orson Krennic - brilliant Wallmaker, rising in his profession, tipped to become _the_ Wallmaker, well-born and well-connected, a close friend of the Abhorsen himself - had been responsible. The same way nobody could prove that Orson Krennic was the reason that Abhorsen was missing now.   
  


  
Jyn broke her silence when they reached the Charter stone near Barhedrin, the one that should had been protected by a garrison of Royal Guards less than a mile away.  It was smeared with blood and cracked down the centre, and a powerful feeling of nausea attacked Jyn when she came close enough to touch it.   
  
The light was dying in the sky, but Jyn could still see Captain Andor’s face clearly. “What happened here?”   
  
“I don’t know,” Captain Andor said. He looked a little rattled himself, but not surprised, and that in itself was telling. “I wasn’t here myself.”   
  
“The Guards at Barhedrin…” Jyn’s voice died, in the snow and the silence and the phantom lap of the River at her feet. She hunted around until she found the body of the woman who had been sacrificed here - a small-town healer and mage, by her clothes and her markings, the sort of woman Jyn’s mother might have been if she hadn’t laughed the wrong distinguished visitor into smiling - and burnt it, her hands shaking on the simple marks.    
  
“They almost never leave their barracks, these days.” Captain Andor watched as the sacrifice’s body fell into ash. “Things are a great deal worse here than you’ve been told, Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”   
  
Jyn paused, and then turned around to stare at him. There had been more than a faint hint of disdain in his voice; she’d heard it. “If you’re going to talk to me like that, the least you can bloody well do is call me Jyn.”   
  
“Jyn, then,” Captain Andor said, face perfectly blank, without missing a beat. “Did you really never wonder what was happening in the Kingdom?”   
  
Guilt raked sly claws over Jyn’s heart, and hurt welled up in the wounds. “I wasn’t wanted.”    
  
“The Emperor’s marks over half of the Kingdom, and you never thought you might be needed?”   
  
_ No _ , Jyn wanted to say,  _ I’ve never been needed in my entire life _ . Instead, she swung her pack off her back, rolling her shoulders to ease the aching muscles, and pulled a tin of dried fruit and toffee pieces from the top. Lacing the pack back up again, she stuffed her gloves into her pockets and shoved a handful of the fruit and toffee into her mouth, which made it difficult to speak again, but which gave her a suitably uncaring air and which covered any distress that might otherwise have got into her voice. “My father made it clear that the Emperor was none of my concern.”   
  
“Your father is gone,” Captain Andor said harshly. “Dead or worse. Krennic is one of the Emperor’s lieutenants. Your father was a close associate of Krennic’s. Krennic sent the Hish that killed your mother.”    
  
“So now what?” Jyn shouted, flinging her arms up, mouth still somewhat full of toffee. The wind whipped her words from her. “You want me to run off to the Emperor’s secret lair and kill him? Right now?”   
  
“Let’s start with Krennic!”   
  
“At least we can agree there!”    
  
Their voices echoed up against the nearby cliffs, muffled only slightly by the snow, which was falling faster and faster. Jyn snatched her pack and heaved it back across her shoulders, glowering at Captain Andor.    
  
“Let’s move on,” she snapped. 

  
  
  
They kept skiing until they reached the path that led up into the cliffs, and then they removed their skis and strapped them across their backs in perfect silence. Jyn was starting to doubt her own memory, and the notes and maps that her mother had made, which had always been Jyn’s property. Her father had an almanac of his own, but he kept that to himself.   
  
“We had better move faster,” Captain Andor said ungraciously, halfway up the path, where it turned from slope to stairs. “If we don’t want to be caught. The Emperor has claws everywhere, and we’ve been out for too long.”   
  
Jyn glanced up at the sky; it was now full dark, and the stars were very bright above them. Her hand brushed over the pipes strapped securely against her chest, and she felt the lack of a set of true bells, or a proper hauberk in gethre. The sweat drying on her back felt cold as fear, but when Jyn let her senses unfurl over the wide snow-wracked silence around them, she felt nothing. At least, nothing close.   
  
“You’re right,” she said. “But there’s nothing here right now.”   
  
“Are you sure?” Captain Andor said, in a way that made Jyn want to slap him straight off the steps.    
  
“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped. “Abhorsen-in-Waiting, remember?”   
  
They climbed in more angry silence. The wind bit and caught at their faces with fingers of frost.    
  
An hour later, when even Captain Andor’s breath had started to wheeze a bit and clouds were chasing each other across the moon’s face, dappling the steep steps, Jyn sensed something in the distance, something from overhead, rapidly approaching. She seized the pipes and her sword and stared into the darkness, but could see nothing - and yet she knew it was there, somewhere, on the edge of her senses. A massive flock of malicious spirits rapidly approaching from the air.   
  
“Run!” she said, shoving the sword back into its sheath and tightening her grip on the pipes, which shivered under her fingers. “Gore Crows!”   
  
Her own feet sprung into life when she heard her words, pounding up the steps, and Captain Andor was not far behind her. Jyn could not count the minutes, she only sensed the crows hunting, hunting, and she felt chased, a fear she didn't recognise but knew intimately pouring out of some hidden source within her.    
  
She’d always hated hide and seek.    
  
Jyn almost crashed into the wall in the darkness, and Captain Andor, millimetres behind her, swore. “This is not a door!”   
  
“It is,” Jyn hissed back, “it _is_ , now shut up and keep guard,” and swapped the pipes from her left hand to her right pocket. Half-drawing her sword, she clasped it lightly, though her palm shook and it cut unevenly; she felt the crows zero in on the scent of blood, and hastily dropped her sword back into the sheath and smeared her bloody palm over the wall. Then she took the pipes in her left hand, feeling the cut shift and sting and the pipes shiver with a cool joy as fresh blood touched them, and drew her sword for real. Captain Andor was focussed outwards, on the flock now clearly visible flying out of the light of a full moon; he had a Charter spell in one hand and a sword in the other, and Jyn was almost comforted that he was here too. The sense of the crows was getting closer and closer, old and vicious and peculiarly uniform spirits arrowing towards them. Jyn lifted the pipes to her lips.   
  
She backed into the wall, and felt old wood ring where she had wiped her bleeding hand. “Yes!” she hissed, and turned hastily, shoving the pipes back into her pocket and scrabbling at the iron ring until the door swung open. “Get in, get in!”    
  
She didn’t have to tell Captain Andor twice. The pair of them burst through the door and slammed it shut behind them, its ghostly guardian appearing out of the rock as Jyn heard the thuds of Gore Crows hitting the door. The guardian looked at Jyn and nodded, and Jyn almost smiled when she nodded back. It had been a long time since she’d seen a sending, and in a curious way, it felt like coming home, in a way crossing the Wall had not.    
  
The guardian raised its sword and gestured for them to run.  _ They’re only crows _ , Jyn thought - but then Saw’s voice spoke to her, stern and unyielding and distinctly paranoid. This was the Old Kingdom, he reminded her. Everything was more dangerous than it looked, and complacency was weakness. The thudding was getting louder, and it wasn’t stopping.   
  
And Captain Andor was already halfway down the corridor. Jyn caught up with him by the riverbank, an unwelcome suspicion leaping to mind when he didn’t hesitate or startle at the sight of the stepping stones. The suspicion grew as he turned to her, bland-faced, and waved a hand at the stones.   
  
“After you,” he said, and Jyn strapped her pipes back into their sheath and jumped. She didn’t take her eyes off Captain Andor until she had no choice; that was another of Saw’s warnings that she wasn’t likely to forget. 

  
  
The stones were hell. Jyn had a distinct memory of her parents joking about them, though she remembered very little of their actual actions or day-to-day speaking; places and objects were better lodged in her memory. Still, she slipped and slid and jumped her way across the stepping stones, Captain Andor never far behind, and finally made her way through the gate in the walls of Abhorsen’s House. _Home_ , she thought, although that label sat as uneasily here as it did when Jyn used it for Wyverley College.    
  
Her knees were shaking. She was soaked and cold and full of adrenaline, and the cut on her left palm pulled every time she flexed her hand. The dawn was breaking slow and grey over Abhorsen’s House, and as Jyn staggered up the brick path, pushed the door open with weary hands that left a bloody smear on the blue paint, and found herself in the warm entrance hall, she saw something that felt familiar.    
  
Or someone, she remembered, staring blearily at the cat at the foot of the stairs. Small and white, with sharp teeth and sharper green eyes.    
  
“I remember you,” she said, through thick, numb lips that wouldn’t move as she wanted them to. “Mogget. I used to play with you. Bring you fish.”   
  
“You liked cats,” Mogget acknowledged. “I thought it was a sign of good taste. Promising if unlikely, in an Abhorsen.”   
  
Jyn dropped her pack and fell to her knees beside him, one trembling hand reaching out to stroke his fur. She neither knew nor cared where Captain Andor was, though if he’d fallen into the water she was not sure she’d have heard the splash.    
  
“Welcome home, Abhorsen,” Mogget said. “I have a lot to tell you. And so do our visitors.”   
  
“Visitors?” Jyn said weakly. “Abhorsen?” She stared at him. “Right. Tell me when I’ve slept.”   
  
“A wise choice,” Mogget said. “I am surprised. Besides the fondness for cats, you were an obnoxious little girl.”   
  
“Piss off,” Jyn said, drawing once more on Saw’s extensive lessons in soldierly language, and dragged herself upstairs to bed.   



	4. Chapter 4

She woke because a sending had put a cup of tea down by her head, but when her eyes flashed open the sending faded quietly back into the morning light, Charter marks gleaming in the rays spilling through the drawn curtains.  
  
“Thank you,” Jyn said, sitting up and putting a hand to her head. She had had the presence of mind to remove most of her clothes before climbing into bed, but the things she was still wearing were grimy, and she felt disgusting.   
  
The sending rapped a bronze wheel in the corner imperatively. Jyn winced.   
  
“Let me wash myself,” she said firmly, picking up the tea and sipping at it. Herbal, whatever it was; Jyn didn’t recognise it. But it woke her up.   
  
The sending tried to grab her and stuff her under the tap like a puppy when Jyn finally got up and investigated the wheel. Jyn tried to set the sending on fire and swore a great deal, and eventually it left the room, a little singed and wearing a palpable air of disgust. Jyn was left alone to try the bronze wheel and pipe arrangement until hot, slightly sulphurous water sputtered out, and she managed to wash herself to her own satisfaction and dry herself on one of the linen towels. The soap smelled of verveine, and - struck by some sense-memory - Jyn looked around the room.   
  
There were few identifying features. It had warm panelling and the same relentless key motif as the rest of the house. An empty weapons rack, and a stand for armour, attested to the fact that whoever was normally assigned this room fought so often that they needed their weapons to hand constantly. The furniture was not elaborate, but it was massive and old, and the room was designed with expensive comfort in mind. There were a lot of books around, and many of them looked like sketchbooks or notebooks, not published volumes. There was also a small wooden two-sided frame on top of a dresser. It had been closed and laid face-down.   
  
Jyn pulled a linen shift, light woollen gown in slate grey, and silken blue surcoat over her head, towelling her hair dry a little more firmly and gathering it up so it wouldn’t drip on the silk. Belting the surcoat with a matching sash, and stuffing her feet into a pair of blue slippers, she trod carefully across the room and picked up the frame.   
  
It flipped open in her hands, and Jyn almost dropped it. Its two faces bore gleaming painted images of her mother, about to laugh, and herself, very young and very sombre. A scrap of paper protruded from under Lyra’s portrait, but Jyn didn’t pick at it; it was presumably an early sketch, or a love-letter, or something else private she would rather not glimpse. And in any case, the framed portraits had already told her everything she needed to know.   
  
She was in her father’s room, where a picture of her had been kept, and then hidden from view. Jyn looked around for one stifled moment, and then stopped resisting the temptation to snoop. She checked the drawers and the wardrobe, and found nothing but perfectly ordinary clothes. The notebooks were dated by Old Kingdom and Ancelstierran years, and labelled _Galen Erso_ until about ten years before Jyn’s birth, when the last _Galen Erso_ was crossed out and replaced by _52nd Abhorse_ n. Either they were written in code or they were too technical for Jyn to follow, with large sections written in alphabets for Charter marks that Jyn hardly even recognised: Jyn couldn’t say which. She could certainly pick out diagrams drawn in her father’s precise hand, even if she couldn’t say what they did. But she was very sure, from the total lack of dust on top of the sketchbooks and notebooks contrasted with the light coating on top of a few unfamiliar novels, that they had been disturbed by someone else.   
  
_Visitors_ , Jyn remembered, and was suddenly very angry. The sending had left out a strap and holster that her pipes fit neatly into; she buckled it on, took the pipes from their velvet-lined shelf recessed into the wall, and slotted them into place. Then she gathered up the long skirts she’d been given and let herself out of the bedroom, nearly falling over Mogget on the way.   
  
He twined round her ankles - so far as Jyn could tell, for the express purpose of tripping her up. “You’re awake,” he said. “So are our visitors.”   
  
Jyn knelt down, and he climbed onto her shoulder. She could feel him purring with a kind of malicious mischief, and Saraneth rang in her ear. She steadied her breath. “Tell me about them,” she invited.   
  
“So long as you don’t fall down the stairs with rage,” Mogget said, all of his claws pricking the skin of her shoulder. “You weren’t such an angry little thing before.”   


  
She found Captain Andor in what Mogget informed her was the dining room - Jyn had old, distant memories of this house, but everything seemed smaller than it had done then, and the few things she did remember accurately felt out of focus. She recalled the shifting stained-glass windows, but in isolation rather than as part of a room, and she didn’t spare a glance for them now: she was too busy glaring at Captain Andor. He was accompanied by one person and a sending - very tall, very thin, dressed in plain black clothing and the Regent’s emblazon - and Jyn was never more shocked in her life than when the sending turned to her and spoke.   
  
“Cassian, she’s here.”   
  
“I know, Kay,” Captain Andor said. He was standing behind his chair, with his eyes resting on Jyn, neutral and bland.   
  
“Your sending talks,” Jyn blurted.   
  
“He’s supposed to,” Captain Andor said, unruffled. “His name is Kay. Kay, this is Jyn Erso, the Abhorsen.”   
  
“Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” Jyn corrected, and before Captain Andor - Cassian? - could say anything, the third person in the room blurted:   
  
“Galen’s daughter?”   
  
Jyn’s head swung round so sharply her neck burned. She found herself staring at a man who was perhaps ten years older than her, someone who wore his long black hair neatly pulled back in a working knot, whose large dark eyes and smooth brown skin were dulled with anxiety. There was a jerky nervousness to his movements, and a Wallmaker blazon on the yellow surcoat he was wearing.   
  
“You’re the apprentice,” Jyn said. She felt sorry for him now she saw him. He looked as if the recent past had not been kind to him, and he was looking at her like she mattered, which was fairly new to Jyn.   
  
He flinched. “Well. Not formally.” He bowed. “Bodhi Rook. Galen - the Abhorsen, I mean - he talks about you.”   
  
“Jyn Erso.” Jyn curtseyed, careful not to dislodge Mogget, but was unable to keep an edge of sarcasm out of it. Miss Prionte, who taught etiquette, frequently despaired of her pupils - generally at the top of her voice - but she had despaired of Jyn more than she despaired of most girls. “I wish he talked to me more. What are you doing in my house?”   
  
She shared the glower around everyone present except Mogget, who curled his tail around her neck. Jyn couldn’t tell if it was an attempt at strangulation or approval. “That applies to all of you.”   
  
Bodhi Rook withdrew a little, and the sending who could speak - Kay? - opened his, or maybe its, mouth to say something. Captain Andor silenced Kay with a tiny gesture. His eyes were fixed on Jyn’s, and hers on his.   
  
“When the Abhorsen disappeared and Bodhi Rook came forward to say he had missed a planned meeting, the Regent was… concerned,” he said, levelly. “Various conventional attempts to find him failed, and the Daughters of the Clayr have not Seen him. The only option was to search his papers for clues as to where he might have gone.”   
  
Jyn was breathless with anger. The sendings were beginning to bring in covered platters and dishes and lay the table; Mogget made an interested noise and leapt down from her shoulder, leaving pinpricks in his wake, but Jyn barely noticed. Mogget had given her far more detail, particularly regarding a man called Davits Draven and his reflections on the worth of the Abhorsen line, but hearing it made bland and half-reasonable from Captain Andor’s mouth was infuriating. “So - what - you searched this house? Without asking him? Or me?”   
  
“We were trying to save his life,” Captain Andor said, voice dropping slightly, each word shortening - presumably as his temper shortened likewise, his shoulders were drawing up and stiffening, that hawk-like face sharpening. “We assumed no-one would have a problem with that.”   
  
“Firstly,” Jyn said, “I don’t sodding believe you. Nothing you’ve done so far suggests you care about whether my father’s dead or not. All you want is to get an Abhorsen, any Abhorsen, into the Kingdom. And secondly, search an Abhorsen’s home? Just like that? Do you know what’s in this house? You could have died - which I wouldn’t have cared about - but you could have turned into something worse than just dead, and I don’t see how five Royal Guards and a Wallmaker being turned into revenants in the middle of Abhorsen’s House is going to help anything!”   
  
“I helped,” Kay volunteered. “I am not alive. And therefore can’t be turned into one of the Dead.”   
  
Jyn, not remotely soothed by this, geared up to shout - and then Bodhi Rook spoke up, quiet and nervous but clearly determined. Mogget had told her that he’d been questioned by Davits Draven, and not in a way (Mogget had said, with a sly nastiness) that the Regent would have approved of. Even Captain Andor didn’t know it had happened, according to Mogget, but Jyn wouldn’t put anything past the man. Since Jyn knew what to listen for, she could hear the halt in the Wallmaker’s voice, the occasional twist in his words where Charter spells had forced his tongue to speak, and speak only truth.   
  
She wondered if Davits Draven, whoever he was, would have asked an Abhorsen to use Dyrim make Rook speak. He seemed to have done so much of such dubious legality, Jyn found it hard to believe the use of a necromancer’s bells was beyond him.   
  
“I checked Galen’s notebooks,” Bodhi Rook said. “Because - I know his code. And - I know what he was working on. And - he helped me get away. From the Wallmakers.”   
  
“Away from the Wallmakers?” Jyn said.   
  
A tremor ran through the Wallmaker. Jyn didn’t think he knew about it, or could have stopped it if he did. “Things have… changed.”   
  
“What was he working on? My father?” Jyn tried to make her voice gentle, as if one of the younger girls at Wyverley had had a nightmare, and had decided that the scariest of the Upper Sixth, rather than the kindest, was the best person to confide in.   
  
“A way to stop Orson Krennic.”   
  
“What was Orson Krennic doing?”   
  
“Building a weapon that could destroy anything in the Kingdom,” Bodhi said. His voice twisted more than ever, and he was staring past her, seeing something invisible to Jyn. She wondered how many times he’d been made to say this. “So the Emperor can - can make all the land his.”   
  
There was a silence, broken only by the clattering of dishes and a yowl as Mogget caught the wrong side of a sending. None of them moved.   
  
“You look like him,” Bodhi said tentatively, “your father, I mean. Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”   
  
“Call me Jyn,” she said, and sat down at the table. 

  
  
Breakfast was a breathtakingly awkward meal. Jyn barely tasted a mouthful she ate, though she was distantly aware that it was good. There was certainly plenty of it, and it made a change from Wyverley’s porridge. They ate in near-silence, and then Jyn rested both hands on the table, palm down, and took a deep breath.   
  
“I think,” she said to Captain Andor, “it’s time you told me what’s going on here.”   
  
Captain Andor laid down his knife and fork. He ate with a finicky neatness and a steadiness that told Jyn someone had taught him table manners, and someone - probably not the same someone - had taught him to eat whenever he could, or risk going hungry. Kay had sat beside him and commented in a very low voice on what he was eating; the sending seemed to have worked out some kind of nutritional programme. Captain Andor had returned only the quietest and briefest of replies.   
  
“I told you what was going on,” he said. Jyn noticed, along with the table manners, an ease with the dining room’s rich trappings that she couldn’t claim to feel herself. The silver cutlery sat easily in his hands, and he was comfortable on the velvet-covered seats; she wondered where he’d learned that. Perhaps he’d simply taken to etiquette lessons better than she had. “Your father has disappeared -”   
  
“You told me parts of it,” Jyn said. “I want the context, too.”   
  
Captain Andor said nothing.   
  
Jyn pressed her palms into the table instead of clenching her hands into fists, but it wasn’t enough to stave off her anger, and she felt her jaw and neck tighten anyway.   
  
“You were the one who asked if I ever wondered what was happening in the Old Kingdom,” she said, and tried not to spit the words. “It’s hard to wonder about something you’re allowed to know very little about. My father was afraid of something particular. I haven’t crossed the Wall since I was eight.”   
  
She’d asked. Not all of Saw’s stories about the Old Kingdom were bitter; in fact, many of them weren’t, and nearly all of Jyn’s childhood memories were sweet enough to entice her back. And besides, Jyn had thought the danger sounded exciting. But Galen had always shaken his head and said no, and Jyn had given up asking when she was thirteen, memories and hope fading. And her father had never offered to take her home.   
  
“Besides,” Jyn said, tapping her fingers on the highly-polished mahogany. “I want to know what you think happened.”   
  
Captain Andor gave her a look Jyn could only describe as snotty, sat up straight as if he was reporting to someone - Jyn, very deliberately, slouched - and began to speak.   
  
Some of it Jyn already knew. Queen Padmé had been murdered by the necromancer calling himself the Emperor before Jyn was born. When she'd left the Old Kingdom she'd been too young to be told anything more than the barest bones of the story, but too old to miss the tales being whispered between frightened adults. Captain Andor knew a few more details than she did, but nothing he said was any more ominous than Saw’s take on the entire situation, told in the most bloodcurdling tones possible to Jyn over hot cocoa when she’d stayed with him as a girl. What he did include that she hadn't known about before was the politics. The Regency, the rise of the guilds as a controlling force, and the Wallmakers in the ascent: a Charter bloodline that was neither prone to visions nor tied to the Dead.   
  
“Except - there are none left,” Bodhi interrupted at this point. His jaw set and he raised his head slightly when Jyn and Captain Andor looked across at him. “Everyone of the Blood, and everyone who backed them, has… left. Or vanished. Since Orson Krennic won the election to be the Wallmaker - nearly ten years ago, I was still an apprentice…” His voice trailed off.   
  
Jyn looked back at Captain Andor, and racked her brains for why that was important. When Saw talked about his days on the Wall he used to talk about dugouts and duckboards and spells hung on barbed wire, but also about stone, and yes, magic…

  
“So Orson Krennic is the Wallmaker, is he?” she said slowly, as the meaning of Bodhi’s additional information came back to her.   
  
“Very interesting,” Mogget purred, sounding hugely entertained. “Very interesting.”   
  
Jyn ignored him. “Responsible for the upkeep of the Wall itself? And the Charter Stones?”   
  
Captain Andor nodded.   
  
Jyn realised that she had sat up straight, partly out of habit and partly out of interest, and sank back into her chair again. “Go on,” she said.   
  
Captain Andor briefly outlined a tangle of political wrangling that made Jyn’s head spin, and concluded with the ascension of Breha and Bail Organa to the Regency, at roughly the same time that Orson Krennic became the Wallmaker. A popular couple, by all accounts, from the wealthy north, on the road to the Greenwash and benefiting from the Bridge’s trade hub, but far enough away to be relatively safe from the threat of the clansmen. They too had died the previous year, the victims of some mysterious weapon: there had been a flash of blue light and a strong taste of hot metal on the air, and the Palace garden they had been strolling in had been reduced to ash.   
  
“Free Magic?” Jyn interrupted. “In the palace?”   
  
Captain Andor nodded. His recital had become particularly bloodless as he spoke of the former regents. “No-one was ever able to find the source, and none of the wards were broken.”   
  
“That’s not -” Jyn cut herself off. Clearly, it had happened. “Go on.”   
  
Orson Krennic was a suspect, Captain Andor explained, on account of the details of some financial transactions, his exceptional magical skill, and the fact that the Regents had recently blocked legislation that would have granted the Wallmakers sweeping powers of direct taxation - for benefit of the Wall, the Stones, and other public infrastructure - as well as obstructing some land grants that were supposed to have been made to the Wallmakers, as represented by Orson Krennic. And - of course - there had always been rumours about why the Hish had been able to circumvent the Abhorsen and track down Lyra and Jyn so easily. One murder might breed another, if Lord Bail or Lady Breha had stumbled on even circumstantial evidence for Krennic’s role.   
  
In any case, the new Regent, a woman called Mon Mothma, had tried to arrest Krennic on suspicion both of the killing and the mysterious disappearance of the Organas' daughter, nineteen-year-old Lady Leia, but it hadn’t gone well. Lawyers had come from nowhere, paid for by guilds with gold tied to the Wallmakers. The guilds had complained that their traditional rights of jurisdiction were being violated, regardless of the murder, regardless of the fact that the Wallmakers were not a guild. So many people appeared to owe Krennic or his allies so much - or fear them so much - it had all come to nothing. Mon Mothma had been forced to climb down, and most government (if you could now call it that) was carried out from the Clayr’s Glacier, not Belisaere. No arrests had been made for the murder of the former regents, and their daughter was still missing. The Royal Guard were loyal, in parts, but too many of their loyalties were regional. Towns paid them, and they came. If not, not. The Wallmakers seemed to behave as normal, but…   
  
Jyn shook her head. She had seen the state of the Charter stone near Barhedrin. And the Wall.   
  
“There are things we just don’t go to,” Bodhi said softly. His tongue was twisting again. “Calls for help we don’t answer, because there’s something more urgent. But there’s always something more urgent. And we used to mend Stones for free. Now, we charge. Krennic charges. And if the price is too high…”   
  
His voice faded, and Jyn shuddered, imagining a village left without the protection or the comfort of its Charter stone, left instead with a beacon for cruelty and vicious creatures like the one she and Captain Andor had argued beside.   
  
“And against the backdrop of all this,” she said, “my father disappears.”   
  
Captain Andor nodded. So did Bodhi.   
  
“He was supposed to meet me,” Bodhi said, avoiding Jyn’s eye in a very tell-tale way. Jyn kept half an eye on him, suspicions simmering in her brain. “He - often visited the Wallmakers, people used to flock to him. Not just the ones who believed in the Blood, the ones who just - Jyn, your father is - was -”   
  
“Is,” she said. “I’d know.”   
  
“That seems improbable,” Kay observed.   
  
“Thank you for your advice,” Jyn said coldly. “Bodhi, go on.”   
  
“Brilliant,” Bodhi said, sounding more sincere than anyone else had at any point in the last twenty-four hours. Jyn liked him for it. “Your father, I mean. Truly gifted. People came from across the country for the chance to learn from him.”   
  
_I wanted to learn from him_ . But Bodhi had meant well, so Jyn swallowed the words back. “Thank you, Bodhi,” she said, in a tone level enough that she thought Mrs Umbrade would have been pleased (if very surprised). “Consider yourself my guest here.” She pushed her chair back a little, and rose. “I would like to go and see my father’s study, and see if he left me any sort of message. Walk with me. I’d like to know any stories you have to tell about him.”   
  
Bodhi flushed badly, and Jyn’s nascent suspicions began to coalesce. Saw had told her such things happened, and were looked on better in the Old Kingdom than in Ancelstierre, where they tended to be discussed in code or were handled with such stultifying respectability nobody would believe the parties involved cared for each other at all. Partnerships of the like were never mentioned at Wyverley College. But if Bodhi at least hadn’t wanted the Abhorsen, Jyn would eat her wretched woollen djibbah, sash and all.   
  
“Of - of course,” he said, getting up. She didn’t think it was Draven’s spells twisting his tongue now. “Thank you, Ab- Jyn. I will help you if I can.” His voice hardened. “Though I’ve already told General Draven everything I know.”   
  
Captain Andor’s head lifted slightly at that, and Jyn thought she saw the tiniest frown between his brows. Maybe he really hadn't known about Bodhi’s torture, or maybe he was just surprised to hear Bodhi allude to it.   
  
“Maybe he was asking the wrong questions,” Jyn said, watching Captain Andor carefully. “Or asking them in the wrong way.”   
  
Captain Andor’s jaw hardened, and - so far as Jyn could tell, though she was reading his expressions with more precision than she would have expected, after such a short acquaintance - he looked troubled. But he said nothing.   
  
“Maybe,” Bodhi said. Jyn heard the defiance in his voice.   
  
“You’re my guest,” she said again, her eyes on Captain Andor. “Anyone who wants to ask you questions can address themselves to me.”   
  
Captain Andor nodded very slightly, his own dark eyes almost blank, except for the half-moon of watchfulness lurking in their depths.   
  
“Guests?” Kay asked. He had been miraculously quiet for some time. “What does that make us?”   
  
Jyn gathered some of her skirts in one hand, and glared both Kay and Captain Andor down. “Intruders,” she said, and swept out.   
  
Bodhi followed her.


	5. Chapter 5

Her father’s study had clearly been searched, but it was not Jyn’s familiarity with the room that led her to think so. She couldn’t remember it at all. Still, it didn’t take a genius to see that the papers stacked in boxes, the notebooks organised by some system Jyn couldn’t fathom, hadn’t originally looked like that. For one thing, a large number of them were on the floor.    
  
Jyn curled her toes in her slippers and tried not to crush the silk of her surcoat with one hand. At least General Draven and his men, despite turning the room upside down and not bothering to put any of it back - “Rude,” Mogget had said, yawning so all his sharp little teeth showed, “but what can you expect?” - had been smart enough to leave the glass-fronted bookcases alone. Jyn walked over there, as if in a daze, and touched the glass of one with a fingertip; it swung open, and Jyn took down  _ The Book of the Dead _ .   
  
It didn’t burn her or leech her strength, which meant she must have the right to read it, which meant she was Abhorsen-in-Waiting, which meant (since the bells had not come to her) that her father was alive. Jyn ran a finger along its spine, almost affectionately, and then put it back in the case.   
  
“The papers are Galen’s loose sketches and notes,” Bodhi volunteered. “I think. They said something about going to the Clayr’s Glacier to look for more, but Galen told me that only some of an Abhorsen’s papers are ever deposited in the Library, and most of those are only sent there after their death. I know he lodged some copies of his experiments and designs there, but he said there were things which were safer here."   
  
“There are,” Jyn agreed, pacing around the study. It had rained in the night, or perhaps it would be better to say the very early morning; the windowpanes were beaded with crystal, and the garden below was wet. “Especially if nosy generals keep their fingers out of things that don't concern them. The loose stuff is new, isn’t it? My father spoke of binding together notes he had finished with.”   
  
Bodhi nodded. “He used our press. I was allowed to help him, because - I’m good with paper.”   
  
“You’re a printer?” Jyn enquired, with mild interest. She’d wondered what exactly Bodhi had specialised in. He didn’t look to have the massive strength of a smith, and even if he was afraid of Cassian’s colleagues he stood very straight, which argued against a long apprenticeship in any of the detail trades like goldwork. But Jyn didn’t know the Wallmakers very well, and whatever she knew of her father’s skills was not much of a guide. She was beginning to think that the word ‘apprentice’ reflected other people’s assumptions rather than Bodhi’s relationship with her father; much as he talked about the Abhorsen as a teacher, he didn’t say that the Abhorsen had taught him. And when Jyn had called him her father’s apprentice, he had deflected the word.   
  
“No,” Bodhi said. “I build Paperwings. They’re - flying boats, I suppose.”   
  
“Planes,” Jyn supplied, intrigued.    
  
Bodhi nodded, which also intrigued her; how much traffic did the Wallmakers have with the other side of the Wall? “Sort of, although Ancelstierran planes are - clumsy and dangerous. If I’ve understood correctly. Paperwings are an ancient Abhorsen design - but most of the secrets have been lost. Even the Clayr aren’t sure how exactly they were made, although there’s got to be something somewhere in that library. I was… rediscovering them. Your father took an interest.” (Jyn struggled to keep her face under control.) “When he found that I was actually close to building a new one that works…” Bodhi shrugged. “He took more of an interest. And decided to trust me.”   
  
“So,” Jyn said. “Where in his notebooks would you expect to find the answer to what he’s doing now?”   
  
Bodhi swallowed, and ran his hands over his hair, glancing around the study. He didn’t feel quite as comfortable here as Jyn did, she could tell, and wondered if that was to be blamed on her father or was just a consequence of someone who was not an Abhorsen being surrounded by an Abhorsen’s tools. “I would look for something that either wasn’t bound by the Wallmakers, or wasn’t bound at all.”   
  
Jyn made an encouraging noise.   
  
“Krennic… always watched,” Bodhi elaborated. “The binding. He said he was interested, but it was almost the only time he ever came anywhere near the printers. Galen never left his papers alone. Except with me, once or twice. And still - it would have been a risk.” Bodhi hesitated. “I couldn’t have made Krennic leave Galen’s papers alone.”   
  
Jyn nodded. “Did Draven ask you about any of this?”    
  
Bodhi shook his head. “He had his… his questions. I don’t know if you know the spells…”   
  
“Not personally,” Jyn said. “My godfather told me some things.”   
  
“Your - sorry?”   
  
“Like an uncle,” Jyn said, and then belatedly remembered the correct Old Kingdom word. “A sponsor. Anyway. Go on, Bodhi.”   
  
“They’re -” He stopped and swallowed. “They’re rigid. You can answer the question… directly. But that’s it. They only want one… specific… answer.” He swallowed again, blinked hard, and looked away. “Draven doesn’t trust me not to throw in with Krennic.”   
  
Jyn reached out and touched Bodhi’s shoulder, lightly. “You’re safe here.”   
  
“Captain Andor -”   
  
“- knows I would kill him if he tried anything.” Jyn looked over at the highly-polished desk, and saw something moving under the grain of the wood, something that shone as if the weak autumn sun had landed there, when she knew it couldn’t have done, by the angles. She frowned. “Have a look at the papers. See what you can see.”   
  
Bodhi nodded, and sat down on the floor to begin sorting. Jyn went over to the desk, and found that the gleam she had noticed was a deeply buried Charter mark, rippling under the surface of the wood. A message mark. Several message marks, for secrecy and protection, but all of them keyed to… to someone.   
  
To Jyn, she hoped. She glanced at Bodhi, who raised his head and looked back at her.   
  
“It’s not for me,” he said. “That was the only thing they let me into the study for. They tried to trip it or untangle it but none of them could.” A thin, pale smile spread across his face. “Galen was - is - well - good at that kind of thing.”   
  
_ Fine _ , Jyn thought.  _ But it could be meant for anyone _ .   
  
Jyn took a deep breath, touched her own mark, and then touched the mark on the table. It flared suddenly bright, and then Jyn heard a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once, and - at the same time - to speak directly into her own ears. Tears welled up in her eyes, and Bodhi rose to his feet with an avalanche of thudding and hissing noises as books fell and paper fluttered.   
  
“Jyn,” the Abhorsen said. “Jyn, my stardust. I hope you never have to listen to this. And I hope that if you do you can bring yourself to forgive me for the fact that I am not here to tell you in person.”   
  
_ No _ , Jyn mouthed, shaking her head, tears spilling from her eyes.  _ No _ .   
  
“I am going to hunt Orson Krennic. I should have done it a long time ago, but I didn’t have proof. Your mother thought she had some, but it was destroyed, and like so much of Lyra’s work I have not been able to replace it. And then I did have proof, but I also knew Orson was doing something - worse.” There was a hitch in his voice. “Much worse. I have spent the last several years trying to find out the whole truth and root out his network but it is too resilient. It foils me at every turn and I am always too late. I was too late for Bail and Breha; Charter knows they deserved better. But a crisis is coming and I must try and head it off. I hope I am quick enough for your sake, Jyn.”   
  
Jyn let out a wounded sob.   
  
“Listen carefully. I haven’t much time. Orson Krennic is a creature of the Emperor’s - has been for years. He has only recently openly resorted to Free Magic, but it’s possible he has been using it, in quiet and in secret, for years. He consorts with the Emperor’s necromancers and he’s more than half a necromancer himself. He’s built a weapon that channels incredible amounts of Free Magic. I still don't know what it is or how it got the Regents, but I'm beginning to guess. Even if the Kingdom weren't divided, none of our Charter Mages could stand against something like this. If he has the chance to use it freely, he can take anything he wants from the Kingdom. Jyn, if I’m not telling you this in person I’ve failed to stop him.”   
  
Jyn covered her mouth with shaking hands.   
  
“Draven will come here,” her father continued. “Mothma will send him. I’m not a politician but I know that much. He does the regency’s dirty work, and he suspects me of being in league with Krennic. So I’ve hidden your bells somewhere he won’t be foolish enough to go. Or, well, if he is stupid enough… he won’t be a problem any longer. He won’t get past the third level.” He gave a dry and humourless chuckle. “Astarael doesn’t care for intruders. Go to the cellars, and take the stairs down to the sixth level. Your bells will be there.” His voice faltered. “Jyn… the sendings brought them out for you three days ago. It should have been a happy day. You should have been here, we should have celebrated. But…”   
  
The tears ran steadily down Jyn’s face.    
  
“I love you, stardust,” her father said. “And I left a copy of my notes with your bells. Hurry, darling. You don’t have much time.”   
  
The spell ended, and in the echo, Jyn wept. Bodhi rested a tentative hand on her shoulder, but Jyn barely felt it; she sobbed for a few moments longer, then hiccuped back her tears, wiped her nose and eyes, and raised her head.    
  
“Jyn,” Bodhi said softly, and there was an awful sympathy in his voice.   
  
“Please don’t,” Jyn said, flinching. “Please don’t. I have work to do.”   
  
Bodhi let go of her and stepped back a little.    
  
“Whatever you can find in those papers,” Jyn said, “that will help.” She nodded at the stack Bodhi had been sorting. “I’ll need your help with whatever he’s left me, too.”   
  
Bodhi nodded like he was afraid to speak, in case Jyn broke down again.   
  
She swiped at her eyes again, and then strode to the door and summoned the nearest sending. Captain Andor, of course - the nosy, ubiquitous and suspicious Captain Andor - was not far behind. Jyn ignored him.    
  
“Show me the way to the cellars,” she ordered, and the sending bowed gracefully and glided away. Jyn followed it.   


 

  
Down in the cellars it was very quiet. Jyn walked down six flights of steep stone steps bathed in soft Charter light and hatched for grip; they swept far down into the bedrock, and Jyn wondered how deep below the Ratterlin she was now. It was cool and there was a little dampness on the air, and she’d passed one hall leading off a landing where the coolness had abruptly become a bitter chill that reached for Jyn with cradling fingers. Jyn counted floors under her breath until she reached the sixth floor, and met another sending, a guard, who tested her mark but did not stop her.    
  
Jyn pushed through the heavy, heavily-warded door before her into a workroom. Distantly, she could hear a roaring, and after a panicked moment thinking about all the creatures Abhorsens might keep as secret pets, she realised that it must be the waterfall. But she wasn’t really thinking about it, because on a work table, in a clear space beside folded robes that reminded Jyn of lab coats and bronze masks and tools Jyn didn’t want to look at too closely, lay a roughly-bound pamphlet and a bandolier of bells, and a sword in a dark blue leather sheath.   
  
Jyn’s breath came in sharp, stuttering clouds. It was cold down here, and her heart and lungs stuttered with fear and want. She approached the table slowly, testing each step, and picked up the bandolier of bells. She had tried one on before, several times, but it was her father’s and had not fit well; she set the bandolier down, put her pipes aside, and buckled on the bandolier, with its old, well-cared-for leather and its dully gleaming fittings. The bells’ handles shone with polish and with Charter Magic, and they were utterly still as Jyn ran her hands along the pockets.   
  
It fit perfectly. The weight on her chest felt familiar. Jyn took in a breath, and was surprised to find that something so heavy lay light on her ribcage, as if she had always known it, as if it had always been there.   
  
She picked up the pamphlet. It had not been bound in a proper press, and had only waxed card for a cover, but there was a waxed bag beneath it spelled to repel water and protect the book. She flicked through it, noting maps and explanations and brief profiles and an index written in her father’s fair-copy hand, and then put it to one side, picking up the sword in its sheath - which, she now noticed, was stamped with tiny stars. Something small and pale fluttered to one side, but Jyn ignored it.   
  
Jyn drew the sword, and Charter marks gleamed and shone on the immaculate, forge-new edge of its blade. The wire-wrapped hilt bore a simple, practical cross-hatched design; the pommel was a rounded, clouded dark blue stone of some kind, its setting etched with overlapping keys. The weight and length were perfect for Jyn's hand; Jyn tried a couple of passes with it, and found that the balance was flawless.   
  
She tilted the blade up and read the Charter marks that ran up and down it, not the ones for binding and unmaking and ending, but the ones that formed a dedication:   
  
_ I was made by the fifty-second Abhorsen for the fifty-third, to bind the Dead and protect the living. _   
  
Jyn choked on air, and realised suddenly that she had not taken a proper breath since she picked up the sword. Forcing her lungs and mouth into cooperation, suppressing tears she felt she had cried for long enough, she sheathed the sword with exaggerated care, and laid it back on the table.   
  
The pale thing that had fallen to the floor caught her eye, and she knelt down to pick it up and turn it over in the clear light afforded by the Charter lamps. It was a note, the handwriting rather scratchier than the fair copy of the pamphlet but distinctly recognisable.   


  
_ Happy belated birthday, Jyn. 18 already! _ __  
__  
_ With love, _ __  
__  
__ Your father.   


  
Jyn returned to the surface some time later with red eyes and wet cheeks. She was not surprised to find Captain Andor lurking in the hall, barred from the cellar door by a determined sending.   
  
“Abhorsen,” he said, eyes flying wide as he saw the bells.    
  
Jyn handed her new sword and the panpipes to the sending, who took them and stood aside with a distinct air of job satisfaction.    
  
“Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” she said, and lifted the pamphlet in its bag. “We’re going to go and find my father. He left me a map.”


	6. Chapter 6

The Abhorsen had, in fact, left Jyn several maps, with detailed explanations of his reasons for suspecting each place, and references to larger maps to be found in the Library. Jyn fetched her mother’s maps and notes down from her bedroom and flattened the pamphlet out on the dining-room table with several glasses, and Captain Andor spread out the relevant maps beside her, occasionally referring to Lyra Erso’s personal cartography with delicate, careful fingers that Jyn grudgingly approved. Mogget jumped onto the table to offer advice - inevitably, while sitting on the most relevant portion of the map at any given time - and Kay loomed over Jyn’s shoulder in a way that gave her the fidgets, and pronounced judgement on everything they suggested.   
  
Bodhi sat several metres away, fiddling nervously with a seal of wax, careful not to twist or snap it. Jyn had seen him draw a much-folded letter with flakes of blue wax still adhering to it from his pocket, as if to check it was still there, and didn’t ask him why he had kept the seal. As far as she was concerned, he was welcome to it.   
  
Nobody had anything useful to say. Jyn found she knew far too little of the Old Kingdom to be helpful with the practicalities, and her mother’s maps were clear and accurate but the notes were out of date, based on a Kingdom ten years safer and stronger. Kay kept prodding holes in her arguments, and Bodhi hardly spoke at all, except to offer his knowledge of the Wallmakers - which would have been highly relevant, had they not kept their official base in the Ratterlin Delta, prudently distanced from any of the sites the Abhorsen had marked out as Krennic’s less salubrious bases. Captain Andor kept cutting himself off and complaining that coming south to fetch Jyn had separated him from the latest and most useful intelligence, and Jyn snapped at him every time he did so.    
  
“We need to go to the Clayr’s Glacier,” he declared eventually. “And discuss this with the Regent. That is where I was supposed to take you.”    
  
“Take me?” Jyn jibed, with her nastiest smile. “As if you could.”   
  
Mogget snickered. Bodhi coughed, and cut Kay off hastily when the sending began to speak.   
  
Cassian’s ears reddened, and there was confusion on his face for a moment before it was replaced by a flat, blank mask. “I’m under orders to get you there safely.”   
  
“Whether I want you to or not?” Jyn demanded. “It’s miles from where my father is, or may be.” She slapped her hand on the table, making the cut from yesterday's adventures in door-opening throb. “If he wasn’t here to give me the message himself, he’s a prisoner. I have to go to him. Krennic could use him - there are a lot of things you can do with blood and death, and my father’s blood is Charter blood. If Krennic kills him…”   
  
“I hadn’t forgotten,” Captain Andor said, in a careful tone which suggested he was trying to be reasonable. This was not much helped by the furious intensity of those dark eyes glowering at her. “But if you want official help in seeking your father, and, Abhorsen-in-Waiting, you will need it,  you’ll have to come with me to the Glacier. Nobody knows your face; you’ve been south of the Wall too long. Who do you think is going to trust someone who turns up with bells? You may be Abhorsen but any fool can stitch keys on a surcoat, and no archer alive will take the risk of letting a necromancer get close enough to explain.”   
  
Jyn felt her teeth grind.   
  
“He’s right,” Mogget volunteered, grooming his paws with a finicky neatness.   
  
Jyn felt the brass tacks on the back of the chair she was holding onto cut into her wounded palm, and swore as fresh blood ran. She pulled her hand away as if it had been stung, sucking at it. “I can provision myself here. I’ve read all my mother’s maps and notes. She was the best cartographer in the Kingdom. I can follow those. I’ll go alone if I need to, but I don’t trust your precious Regency. You don’t want to get my father back. You just want an Abhorsen. It doesn’t matter which one. If I had a brother or a cousin or something you’d never have bothered to cross the Wall!” She clenched her uninjured hand around the back of the chair, and this time the tacks’ hard surface felt grounding, not wounding. “I’m not going anywhere with you. You haven’t earned a second’s trust from me. How am I supposed to know I’ll be allowed out of the Glacier to find my father?”   
  
There was a silence. Kay started to say something, but Captain Andor made a small, vicious gesture and he closed his mouth, with a shrug that spoke volumes. Captain Andor was staring at Jyn, thin mouth turned sharp and flat, eyes almost murderous, the skin around his mouth pale beige and tight.    
  
“The Regent couldn’t stop you,” Bodhi volunteered quietly after a moment. “She has no standing in the Glacier - she’s a guest. Abhorsens are cousins, though. Family, with certain old traditional rights - including the right to come and go of your own free will. Galen told me. It’s why the Clayr would never detain him there when the Regent asked.”   
  
“You weren't supposed to know that,” Captain Andor complained, but there wasn’t much anger in his voice, and he made no move towards Bodhi.    
  
Bodhi was paler than usual and tense, but he managed a passable shrug. “Galen thinks highly of the Regent,” he said to Jyn. “But he told me he’d never met anyone with less moral sense than her advisor Davits Draven.”   
  
Captain Andor’s face went very carefully blank. Kay looked from him to Bodhi, and Jyn watched them all like a hawk.   
  
“Thank you, Bodhi,” she said eventually. “I appreciate knowing that.”   
  
Bodhi nodded and looked down at his hands. They were trembling. He hid them under the table. Jyn laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, the way Saw had done when she was too old for hugs. She felt Bodhi twitch a little under her hand, and casually lifted it. He looked up at her and gave her half a smile.   
  
“It’s not the worst idea,” Bodhi said. “Going to the Glacier. They have resources and they’d help you. You could find out how the land really lies.” He swallowed. “I want to go after Galen, but - I don’t think there’s more to be gained in leaving now than in going to the Glacier and preparing first. Maybe when he was first trapped, but none of us know when that was, except that it was after June.”   
  
Jyn nodded slowly as she sat back down, eyes fixed on some distant point down the shining table covered in maps. “How would we get there?”   
  
“Overland to Orchyre,” Captain Andor said, “and then a boat, up the Ratterlin.”   
  
“Or,” Bodhi said, lifting his head from contemplation of the map directly in front of him, “there are Paperwings here. We could fly.”   
  
Captain Andor frowned. “Paperwings? Plural? I thought the Abhorsens only had one.”   
  
“They used to,” Bodhi said. “I built the other for Galen. I built two, actually, but there's only one new one on the pad. I don’t know what he did with the other one.”   
  
“With experimental spells?” Kay said, clearly voicing Captain Andor’s own concerns. “By my calculations -”   
  
“I’ve test-flown it a hundred times,” Bodhi said defensively. “So did Galen. It’ll work just as well as the older one. Can you fly a Paperwing?”   
  
“Yes,” Captain Andor said, and arched an eyebrow. “Though perhaps not as well as you.”   
  
“Then I’ll fly with Bodhi,” Jyn said promptly, eyeing Captain Andor as he opened his mouth to protest and then, wisely, closed it again. “How long will it take?”   
  
“A day, in good weather,” Bodhi said, and squinted dubiously towards the window panes at the other end of the room. “This is not good weather. A day and a half to two days - depending on how skilled a pilot Captain Andor is. It’s not the kind of thing you can afford to mess up, especially if you have no reinforcements. I doubt even Kay can do Charter Magic -”   
  
“I can’t,” the sending agreed, rather crossly.   
  
“- and you’ve never flown before, and I don’t know what you’re like with weather magic. No offence.”   
  
“None taken.” Jyn drummed her fingers on the edge of the table and nodded sharply. “We leave at dawn, then, and see how far we can get.”   
  
Bodhi hurried out, muttering about wanting to check on the Paperwings; Captain Andor nodded at Kay, who got up and followed him.    
  
Jyn glared, and rose from her chair with an emphatic scrape of chair legs on floor. “Don’t you think he’s had enough done to him? You don’t need to set your little pet to follow him around like some kind of guard dog.”   
  
“Kay’s not a pet,” Captain Andor said crisply, getting up from his chair. “And he’s not mine. He belongs to himself.”   
  
“I wonder what your boss thinks of that,” Jyn muttered, and eyed him warily as he approached her. “Listen, you leave Bodhi alone - what are you doing?”   
  
He was standing before her, holding out one of his hands, palm-up. “Your hand,” he said. “It’s bleeding again. You didn’t bother to heal it.”   
  
His eyes were very dark, Jyn noticed. And there were small tired lines at the corner of his eyes that shouldn’t have been there, on someone who could only be a few years older than Jyn herself. “It’s a scratch,” she said, tucking her injured hand behind her back.   
  
“It’s an easy spell.”   
  
“I don’t know what you know about Ancelstierre, but a good north wind is hard enough to come by that you don’t use Charter Magic for just anything.”   
  
Captain Andor said nothing. He just stood there, patient, unmoving, and perfectly aware that he was in the right.   
  
Jyn sighed crossly, and laid her hand in his palm, the half-scabbed, still-oozing cut facing up. His palm was warm and his fingers light as they curled under her wrist, and for a moment Jyn felt her breath hitch as she stared at him, head bent over her injured palm and sketching marks with the fingers of his free hand.   
  
_ He has very long lashes _ , she thought irrelevantly, and then swore at herself and forced herself to notice, instead, the assured motions of his hand and the ease with which he put the spell together. It was a simple spell, but it was very clear he found it effortless, and that surprised Jyn, who had outstripped the Magistrix at Charter Magic when she was twelve, and had never found an equal in Ancelstierre. She could feel her skin knitting together as the marks sank into her flesh, golden fire soothing the torn epidermis, fusing together small veins and nerves.    
  
“You’re good at that,” she said, when he released her hand - promptly, as soon as the last marks had vanished into the skin, but not insultingly so - and she lifted it to her face, examining the smooth pink mark that remained.   
  
“Thank you,” Captain Andor said neutrally.   
  
“No,” Jyn said. “Thank you.” She let her hand drop, and looked up at him. “It did sting,” she said, feeling the need to justify her thanks somehow.    
  
His mouth quirked at one corner. Jyn tried not to think about the way the other girls at Wyverley would have swooned over that expression. She took a tiny step back, as much to stop herself stepping forward as anything else, and watched his face shutter.   
  
She tried not to be sorry about that. She didn’t like the man. She didn’t want anything to do with him. She’d cheerfully leave him in a ditch, if it weren’t for the lack of suitable opportunities.   
  
“Well,” Mogget said loudly, reminding them both that he was still on the table, watching them with a peculiarly toothy grin. “How very interesting.”   
  
“Shut up, cat,” Jyn said, and stamped away.   
  
  


She spent the rest of the day sitting in the study reading  _ The Book of the Dead _ , and nothing about it was the same as anything she’d read before, except for those last few words:   
  
_ Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker? _   
  
Jyn thought of her crossing of the Wall the previous day, the shadow of the ancient stones falling over her, and was unable to suppress a shudder.   


  
  
Jyn ate dinner at the desk in the study, unwilling to deal with the other occupants of the house; Mogget had a small platter of fish in a corner of the room with a rather battered velvet cushion, and she told the sendings to give Bodhi his supper wherever he would prefer to eat it. She relished the sturdy, richly flavoured vegetable dish they brought her, staring out into the darkness beyond the marbled window panes and trying not to think too much about what she was planning to do.    
__  
_ Did you never think you might be needed here? _ Captain Andor asked in her memory, accusatory, and Colonel Raddus squinted at her and said doubtfully  __ you’re very young, to be crossing the Wall without your father . She felt the lack of her father at her shoulder, wished powerfully for her mother by her side, and tried not to let the shifting currents around her pull at her ankles too persuasively.   
  
She fell asleep in her chair, earlier than usual, and was woken by Mogget clambering onto her lap and setting all his claws in her thigh through her dress. Jyn yelped and swore.   
  
“Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” he said, and Saraneth rang with every gleam of those bright green eyes. “You’ll find you sleep better in your own bed.”   
  
“Oh.” Jyn rubbed her eyes. “You’re right.” She dropped her hands in her lap, one of them falling to stroke Mogget’s soft fur absently, one resting on the chair’s arm, and stared out through the window to a cloudless night and a very bright moon. “Thank you.”   
  
Mogget nuzzled his head against her wrist. “Will you take me with you, tomorrow?”   
  
“Yes,” Jyn said. “If you like. I could use your advice.”   
  
“Do you trust me?” Mogget said, and maybe it was the underlying slyness in his voice, maybe it was the warning catch of that heavily spelled collar under Jyn’s thumb, or maybe some instinct of her own, but she stopped and laughed.   
  
“About as much as I trust Captain Andor,” Jyn said. “Sometimes. With a little luck. In the right light.”   
  
She looked down at Mogget, who was looking up at her thoughtfully.    
  
“You’re your mother’s daughter,” he said. “With your father’s laugh.”   
  
A chill went down Jyn’s spine. “My mother’s daughter?”   
  
“Untrusting.” Mogget licked his paw. “It didn’t save her.”   
  
Jyn went to bed.   



	7. Chapter 7

The air on the launch pad, directly above the waterfall, was frozen, puffs of icy water clouding up from the whirlpool far below. Jyn tugged the thick wool of her cap a little lower, and tucked the scarf around her neck a little closer. The sendings had put out a full gethre hauberk with winter clothes today, and Jyn had no intention of going against their advice, but she would have preferred a good coat. She wasn’t sure how comfortable this was going to be. She’d gone up in a glider with a protégé of a friend of Saw’s once, wearing a borrowed bomber jacket with a fur lined hood and a heavy plaid blanket wrapped around her legs, and the air had cut sharp as a knife through the plane’s thin fuselage. Jyn had been cold to the bone as well as exhilarated when she’d reached ground level.  
  
Bodhi, for once, seemed confident, his movements sure and comfortable as he moved around both Paperwings lined up on the wooden platform, carrying out what Jyn could only assume were pre-flight checks. Captain Andor was doing the same for one of the Paperwings - presumably the antique, painted in a different shade of blue, its silver slightly faded, and its shape slightly blockier, with sharp corners. Bodhi’s craft was just as slender but more rounded, and slightly larger; Jyn’s father was a tall, broad-shouldered man, and Bodhi had undoubtedly made it to fit him. Bodhi had also painted feathers onto the wings and tail of his craft, feathers laden with Charter spells; the older Paperwing was less heavily decorated, though equally rich in magic.   
  
Jyn tried not to think too hard about the fact that she was about to climb into a paper plane, and inspected the Paperwing instead. “Tell me about it,” she said to Bodhi, and was gratified when his face lit up with pride and he began a litany of the Paperwing’s specifications. She listened with half an ear, and watched as both Bodhi and Captain Andor finished what they were doing. Kay was already sitting in the Paperwing; Jyn didn’t know why. He wasn’t asleep, like Mogget who had climbed into the top of her pack and regally demanded to be woken for nothing less important than a fish dinner, and he didn’t seem to be doing anything, still and watchful. Jyn didn’t know if he needed or wanted to sleep, or eat, or do anything other than lurk behind Cassian and make awkward remarks.   
  
“That’s it,” Bodhi announced. “I’m done. You can climb in, Jyn - the second seat, closer to the back.” Jyn approached the Paperwing and lodged a cautious toe in something that might be a foothold, before scrambling over the side. “Captain Andor, are you finished?”   
  
“Yes,” the other man called. “I’ll follow you.”   
  
“To see if I’m any good,” Bodhi muttered, only just loud enough for Jyn to hear. He climbed in much more elegantly than Jyn had done, and settled in his seat; then he blew on the mirror in front of him, watched as marks formed on the glass, took a deep breath and whistled. Jyn squinted, and saw marks glinting in the cloud of his breath, and then she felt a wind gathering behind them and clutched instinctively at the sides of the Paperwing, which felt suddenly very insubstantial.   
  
Jyn forced her eyes open as the Paperwing slid forward and off the platform, into a dive of twenty metres that had her catching a scream between her teeth, and then the little craft levelled out and pulled forward, out of the mist of frozen air rising from the whirlpool, and Jyn found herself laughing with mingled hysteria and relief, tasting copper in her mouth where her teeth had sunk sharply into her cheek, as Bodhi swung the craft round and up, pulling it over Abhorsen’s House in a perfect loop. He added a quick bright note to his whistling, and the feathers on the edges of the wings flashed in a simple double-burst pattern.   
  
“Signalling?” Jyn called over the rush of wind, unexpectedly delighted by this tiny detail. She leaned her head over the edge of the cockpit, keeping a tight grip on the gunwale as she did so, and saw the other Paperwing glide forward and into the air, then twist to follow them.   
  
“Yes!” Bodhi answered. “If you’ve got more than one Paperwing in the air, you need them! The Daughters of the Clayr just use external Charter spells, but in-built ones are more efficient and need less energy, the marks are already stored.” He squinted at their course over the wide silver ribbon of the Ratterlin, and then craned round to look at Captain Andor, who was holding steady about a hundred metres behind their tail. “Well, he’s all right,” Bodhi said, apparently satisfied, and turned back. He whistled a couple more notes, and the wind behind them intensified, pushing the Paperwing forward that little bit faster.   
  
“Are you going to have to keep whistling all the way to the Clayr’s Glacier?” Jyn asked. It was quieter and less cold in the cockpit than she would have expected, and the seat was more comfortable than she’d feared, but she was still a little concerned. What would happen if Bodhi lost his voice, or burned out?   
  
“No,” Bodhi said, retrieving a flask from a pocket beside his knee. “We’ll follow this wind north as long as it lasts, or until it starts getting dark or the weather gets too bad. Then we’ll land somewhere. I don’t think Captain Andor can handle flying into the night; the Paperwings don’t like it.”   
  
Jyn assumed this was the kind of personalisation most pilots of her acquaintance applied to their planes. “We could leave him behind.”   
  
“We’d just end up with more problems.” Bodhi took a swig from the flask, and passed it back to Jyn, who discovered that it was some kind of sweet, spiced tea, warming and soothing. She clutched at the flask with both hands, and peered over the edge at the Kingdom unfolding below her: mostly a flat plateau rimed with ice and snow right now. “Oh, biscuits. I like your sendings.”   
  
“You fly a lot?” Jyn enquired, struggling to suppress her real question: you fly to Abhorsen’s House a lot?   
  
“Yes. Test flights and messages and so on.” Bodhi darted a quick glance at her as he passed over the packet. “It helped, when - nobody was surprised to see me gone at odd times, you see. I could start building a life outside the Town.”   
  
Jyn nodded. She had her mouth full of sticky caramel biscuit; the sendings were obviously very worried about their energy levels.   
  
“But nobody ever packs my Paperwing with biscuits and tea for me,” Bodhi said, and tossed a grin at her. “It must be because I’m flying with you. The sendings like you.”   
  
“Ha,” Jyn said, licking crumbs from around her mouth. “They don’t know me. Maybe they’ve just got fond of you while you’ve been staying at the House.” She took another swallow of tea, and then passed the flask back. “Do you think we’ll make it to the Glacier today?”   
  
“No,” Bodhi said. He twisted in his seat again, staring back at Captain Andor and Kay in the Paperwing behind. “I could. But I don’t think Captain Andor is as comfortable with a Paperwing as I am.”   
  
“And leaving him behind would cause more problems than it solved,” Jyn said, echoing Bodhi’s earlier statement. He nodded. “So we need to get as far up the Ratterlin as possible and find somewhere sheltered by running water to land.”   
  
Bodhi nodded again. “There are islets, further north, large enough to take two Paperwings.”   
  
“Good.” Jyn sat back and sighed, wondering if she could get at a book in her pack without either disturbing Mogget and being clawed or dropping something over the side. She didn’t want to test the effectiveness of the little bubble of comparatively still air around them.   
  
She looked over the side, and stared at the country. Her country, where her parents had been born and grew up, lived and died. Her country, which tugged at her blood and the Charter graven on her bones, her country, which she had been sworn to protect before she could even support her own head.   
  
She didn’t recognise a single landmark.   
  
“I have cards,” Bodhi said, in a valiant attempt at cheerfulness. “You should learn some of our games.” 

  
  
It was difficult to play cards while sitting one in front of the other in a paper plane rushing through the sky, but Bodhi managed to teach Jyn two games - sabacc and pazaak, the one more popular in cosmopolitan Belisaere, the other played most often in the wild southwest of the country - before having to stop to pick up the wind again. After several hours of  Bodhi coaxing breeze after breeze into the Paperwing’s wings, Jyn clasping his shoulder to lend him strength and trying not to think what would happen if he ran out of breath, a storm began to gather on the eastern horizon and Bodhi leaned back to shout that he’d spotted an island - somewhere to land.   
  
Jyn nodded and braced herself, and the lights on the end of the wings flashed again in another pattern as Bodhi pulled the Paperwing round in a smooth circle, spiralling gently towards the sandy, tree-spotted thumbnail in the river below. Jyn, feeling cowardly (and confident that Captain Andor couldn’t see her) shut her eyes as the circles began to tighten, and did not open them until she felt the Paperwing’s ski-like landing gear touch ground. She climbed out without unnecessary hurrying, and clung on to the edge of the Paperwing, stretching her legs and watching as Captain Andor brought the other Paperwing to a perceptibly bumpier landing.   
  
“We’re about three-quarters of the way there,” Bodhi announced, unstrapping the packs and removing the folded tarpaulin that had covered them. Unfurled, it tied over the Paperwing itself, covering the open cockpit. In case of severe rain, Jyn assumed, fascinated. “Honestly, I didn’t think we’d get this far.”   
  
Captain Andor was attending to his own craft; Kay was wandering around, apparently curious. Jyn wasn’t sure how a sending could be curious, but Kay was showing every sign of it, rubbing the sandy earth between his fingers, pacing out the width of the island.   
  
Jyn thought about a diamond of protection, and then decided that it would be more practical to let everyone relieve themselves before closing such a diamond for the night. She started gathering firewood instead, looking for dry sticks and suitable kindling, and bringing them back to a flat hearth of burned stones that suggested they weren’t the only ones who had used this island for camping. Bodhi was now lashing an additional tarpaulin that had been folded flat on the Paperwing’s floor between the Paperwings’ wings, creating a small, rather flat sheltered area that included the hearth; they’d struggle to fit three adults and one sending the size of a large adult beneath it, but as the first fat drops of rain fell, Jyn conceded it was better than nothing.   
  
Captain Andor, who had shed his oversized light waterproof to reveal a blue coat with a fur-edged hood,  had retrieved a fishing line and was now setting it up just to the lee of the island, carefully baiting the hook with a worm dug from the water’s edge. Kay had been helping Bodhi with the shelter, but now he was standing over Captain Andor, watching silently. Jyn watched both of them for a second, then crouched down beside the hearth and set herself to building a fire. Saw had taught her how, using Charter Magic, flint and steel, matches, and anything else that might light a flame - she’d been ten years old when he’d introduced her to lighter fluid and she was still lying about how she’d scorched her eyebrows back then. This fire was less of a challenge and less dangerous, requiring only a few marks to be introduced to the kindling, and then the slow work of feeding branches to it and building it up, coaxing it into life against the breeze.   
  
The fire was burning merrily, and the rain pattering over the tarpaulin shelter, when Captain Andor returned with a brace of cleaned river fish. Jyn handed him a set of suitable sticks without saying a word - she was hungry, and she’d seen what it was he meant to do; Saw had taught her how to cook fish over an open fire before he’d even taught her how to light one, when she was too young to hold the knife properly - and was surprised by the light that sparked in his eyes when he took them. He nodded in thanks, threaded the fish onto the sticks, and started roasting them. No-one said anything.   
  
Jyn sat back against the side of the Paperwing, and startled when Bodhi’s head fell against her shoulder; he was sound asleep, and Jyn realised he must be exhausted. She pushed her hood between her bony shoulder and Bodhi’s equally bony head, to give him some cushioning, and then looked up at Captain Andor.   
  
“You should sleep too,” she said.   
  
“It’ll be ready soon,” Captain Andor said - a negative without really saying so aloud, Jyn noticed, and she scowled.   
  
“So? Let me do it. Or Kay. Neither of us flew  half the length of a country today.” _And Kay is a sending_ , Jyn did not say out loud. _This is what he’s for. Let him help you._ _  
_   
“Unlikely as it may seem,” Kay announced, “the Abhorsen-in-Waiting is right. I can do it. Go to sleep, Cassian.”   
  
Captain Andor ran his hands over his face, then nodded shortly in acknowledgement and pulled his hood over his head, long legs stretching out as he settled back to sleep. Jyn sat back as well, Bodhi’s head heavy on her shoulder and several small stones uncomfortable beneath her, and kept an eye on the fish Kay was carefully turning over. All his movements were careful, she’d noticed. Studied. They might be quite fast, but every gesture seemed to have been planned.   
  
Kay looked up at her. “What is it, Abhorsen-in-Waiting?”   
  
“Nothing,” Jyn said, looking away. _Call me Jyn_ hovered on the end of her tongue, discomfort at the title she’d been given itching at her - except Jyn didn’t want either him or Captain Andor to get that dangerously comfortable with her.   
  
Kay’s gaze was unblinking. Someone had given him grey glass marbles for eyes, instead of the more usual moonstone; Jyn stared directly into them, and did not flinch.   
  
“I am faster than a human,” he said, after some time.   
  
“What?”   
  
“I am faster than you. I could kill you before you unravelled me.”   
  
Jyn stared harder. Captain Andor’s head was lolling against the side of the Paperwing; he certainly wasn’t awake to hear his sending delivering ludicrous threats to Jyn.   
  
Or maybe not so ludicrous. Kay was tall and strong with a reach longer than Jyn’s, and, as he’d pointed out, he was fast.   
  
“I calculate,” Kay explained, “a thirty-two point nine percent probability that you will try to kill Cassian.” He did not take his eyes off Jyn. “I think you should not try.”   
  
Jyn’s eyes travelled to Captain Andor, those closed eyes with weary purple shadows beneath them, the loosely half-opened hands that were so skilful with the Charter, the exhausted laxity of his posture, and surprised herself with what she said next.   
  
“I can respect that.”

 

  
The next day’s flight was shorter but also more miserable, accomplished in driving sleet by people who had slept badly on hard ground, enclosed in a diamond of protection that limited everyone’s movement.  Even Bodhi, who seemed as if he would be sweet-tempered under normal circumstances, snapped once or twice. Jyn was immeasurably grateful she wasn’t sharing a Paperwing with Captain Andor; she’d have to put up with his snootiness and disdain, and as irritating as that was, she couldn’t imagine how she’d react if she were cooped up in a small craft with him. Jumping over the side into the clouds would be all too tempting.   
  
It had been chilly the day before, but Jyn was sincerely grateful for her layers now. The snow on the ground was as thick here as it had been on the plateau, and the air even more biting - or perhaps that was the altitude. Jyn pulled her hat down further over her ears and tried not to demand how much longer they would be in the air; she trusted Bodhi, but the Paperwing was rocking in the fierce wind and whatever shield the Paperwing bore over the cockpit didn’t keep freezing drops of sleet from snapping at Jyn’s face. There were certainly no card games today: Jyn gritted her teeth and endured, and managed not to scream when a cloud parted and a mountain loomed up out of nowhere.   
  
“Oh, good,” Bodhi said, sounding inappropriately relieved. “Starmount.” He signalled to Captain Andor again, the lights flashing bright against the clouds, and brought the Paperwing into a spiral.   
  
Jyn hung on tight to the edges of the Paperwing and forced her eyes open wide. “You’ve done this before? A lot, I mean?”   
  
“Hundreds of times.” Bodhi flashed her a self-deprecating grin that made her want to yell at him to keep his eyes on the mountain. “I’m - among the Wallmakers, I’m the pilot. I’m better than anyone who isn’t a Daughter of the Clayr.”   
  
“Right,” Jyn managed, and - worried about her fingers breaking through the paper somehow, no matter how solid it felt - unpeeled her hands from the gunwales and clasped them together instead. The descent, towards a swept-clean area so far below it looked minuscule, made Jyn’s stomach swoop and her head feel light; her fingers were so tightly locked together it was almost impossible for her to peel them apart when they finally reached ground level and she felt the Paperwing slowing to a stop.   
  
Jyn let out a long breath that left her lungs empty as Captain Andor’s Paperwing glided to the ground beside them. His jaw looked tight, his eyes wide and his shoulders stiff - he looked like she felt, and she almost smiled at him. He almost smiled back.   
  
Then she heard Bodhi take a deep, shuddering breath, and her head whipped round. He was looking at the dark gaping space beyond a pair of wide-open doors - a hangar, Jyn thought. There was a welcoming committee of Daughters of the Clayr, Jyn vaguely recognised the visibly shivering figures in white robes and moonstone circlets from the stories she’d been told as a girl, but Bodhi was looking beyond them to a half-seen figure several steps behind and to the side. Jyn squinted, and saw a man wearing dull, practical clothes in Regency olive, with reddish, receding hair and a blunt profile.   
  
“Davits Draven,” Bodhi whispered.   
  
Jyn clasped his shoulder. She didn’t tell him it would be all right; she couldn’t. She didn’t know. “Stay with me.”   
  
“No problem,” Bodhi said fervently.   
  
Jyn glanced across at Captain Andor. He was also watching Davits Draven, and there was a slight frown between his brows.   
  
She didn’t have time to ask herself what it meant. 

  
  
The Clayr’s Glacier was warm almost from the moment Jyn stepped inside the hangar, Bodhi at her side. The Clayr had retreated gratefully into the greater warmth as Jyn approached them, making it seem as if they were leading her in; Jyn smiled at them, and was greeted by a series of deep bows which she returned as gracefully as she could.   
  
“Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” said the lead figure, who had the physical appearance of an individual in their forties, with shorn-short hair that was much darker than the childhood image of the Clayr Jyn had carried with her, and eyes the same colour as the moonstones on their slightly more elaborate crown. They tapped a staff twined with silver and Charter marks lightly on the floor, and smiled confidently at Jyn. Their gaze was just slightly off, compared to where it might normally land, and Jyn realised suddenly that this person was blind.  “As the Voice of the Nine-Day Watch - the voice of all Clayr - I bid you welcome.”   
  
“Thank you,” Jyn said, hastily grabbing for whatever fragments of etiquette lessons remained to her. “I am grateful for your welcome; it has been a long and trying journey.” She took a deep breath. “I would like to introduce my companion, Bodhi Rook, a friend of my father’s who has kindly agreed to help me understand his work. My father kept his notes in a partially encoded form, and they are crucial to understanding his current whereabouts and his discoveries regarding Orson Krennic.”   
  
It was too much, she’d overdone it, but at least she’d done it, and when the Voice of the Nine-Day Watch smiled and said: “We welcome Bodhi Rook, also; a guest of our cousin is a guest of ours,” Jyn thought she had done enough.   
  
Bodhi bowed with remarkable elegance for someone who was clearly twitchy and who kept glancing sidelong at the lurking figure of Davits Draven.   
  
Jyn reluctantly gave way to good manners. “I would also like to introduce to your notice Captain -” Damn it, what was his name? She was too used to thinking of him as Andor - “Captain Cassian Andor, and hi- the sending Kay, who have been of material assistance in escorting me north from the Wall.”   
  
Jyn could almost hear Captain Andor’s surprise, but it was only fair; it would have looked strange if she hadn’t said anything. And it felt strange to identify Kay as belonging to anyone, after his threats on Captain Andor’s behalf. The sending clearly acted on his own initiative, however fond he was of Captain Andor.   
  
“We know Captain Andor and Kay,” the Voice said equably. “They, too, are welcome on their return.”   
  
Captain Andor bowed. Kay inclined his head stiffly.   
  
The Voice tapped their cane against the floor once more. “Our Paperwing pilots will bring your craft in, and your belongings will be brought to your rooms. Abhorsen-in-Waiting, we have taken the liberty of preparing the Abhorsen’s rooms for you; they are extensive.”   
  
“Thank you very much,” Jyn said. “Please grant Master Rook a chamber in those rooms, as well.”   
  
The Voice smiled mischievously. “It is done; we Saw your need for assistance.” They tapped their cane once more. “The Charter moves in us all,” they remarked, and Jyn wondered if they were talking to her or Bodhi or both.   
  
“Thank you,” Jyn repeated, somewhat at a loss.   
  
“Please,” the Voice said, genial and friendly. “Come with us. I believe Captain Andor needs to consult his commanding officer before taking further action.”   
  
Davits Draven had not introduced himself, and now he drew back into the shadows a little. Jyn stared directly at him, trying to convey that she knew he was there and who he was, and then looked at Captain Andor.   
  
Captain Andor was looking at her, and there was something almost impressed hidden in that blank, sharp-planed face. Jyn felt a small, gratified jolt go through her, and nodded to him.   
  
He nodded back. It looked strangely formal.   
  
She turned and followed the Voice of the Watch out of the hangar.   
  
When she looked back, Captain Andor was standing still in the pale grey light thrown in through the doors, and Davits Draven had walked out of the shadows to meet him.


	8. Chapter 8

The Abhorsens’ suite was so luxurious Jyn had some difficulty taking it in. Spending her early childhood on the move with her parents, she had known comfort but never excess - or at least, not long enough to make an impression. From the age of eight, her primary experience had been Saw’s ramshackle cottage and the politely spartan surrounds of Wyverley College. Other girls might make trips home, or to visit each other’s houses, but even Jyn’s few friends had never felt she was the sort to invite on trips to delicate or wealthy surroundings. By the time they were comfortable enough to invite this interloper, who had arrived with a strange accent and a burning Charter mark three years after most of them, Jyn had decided that she had no wish to accept.    
  
Carpets of this deep a pile were lovely, and so was the immense, floor-to-ceiling window, but, Jyn thought, the gold detailing was obnoxious and the semi-precious stones were unnecessary. And was it obligatory for all Abhorsens to smother everything in silver keys?   
  
“You’ll find yourselves reasonably comfortable, I hope,” the Voice said, twinkling mischievously at them both. They didn’t seem to have another way of looking at people - either that, or Jyn and Bodhi entertained them very much. “We assumed you would prefer to have your dinner served here. The Regent has left you a message -“ they gestured at a small, folded piece of paper sealed with wax that was stained with Charter marks, laid on a highly polished table - “and wishes you a swift recovery from your long journey.”   
  
“Please give her our thanks,” Jyn said, hoping that Miss Prionte’s lessons applied here too. “And thank you for this generous welcome.”   
  
The Voice of the Nine-Day Watch allowed their smile to broaden, and reached out to touch Jyn’s Charter mark. Automatically, Jyn did the same, and felt an ocean of soft golden fire surround her, overwhelming, reassuring. She was almost sorry when they pulled their fingers away from each others’ marks, and she found herself blinking sparks from her eyes in an overdecorated room.    
  
“The Charter is with you, Jyn Erso,” the Voice of the Nine-Day Watch informed her, and then glided out, enigmatic to the last. The door closed behind their retinue, leaving Bodhi and Jyn staring after them.   
  
_ The Charter is with you _ . Jyn had never heard that turn of phrase before, and it didn’t make sense. The Charter was with everyone who bore a mark, at least two-thirds of the Kingdom’s population, although it was far stronger with some than with others - many of Jyn’s classmates hadn’t been able to produce more than two spells in a row, and several had stopped lessons after a few years because they had reached their personal limit and it wasn’t safe to proceed. Jyn’s Charter blood put her in the stronger category almost by default, but that didn’t mean that the Voice’s words made sense. She scratched her head; her hair badly needed a wash, and her scalp itched.   
  
She looked at Bodhi.   
  
“That’s Chirrut,” Bodhi said, looking equally dumbfounded. “I’ve never met him - as such - but I’ve heard of him.” Bodhi looked at the door. “I understand he’s always like that. He’s very… he’s very well-known here, because he’s very strong in the Sight, and that’s really the only thing that counts for the Clayr. But he’s a little. Um. Eccentric?”   
  
Jyn rubbed the spot on her chest where her medallion lay beneath layers of clothing, and tried not to think of things that confused her. The Charter thing was too… strange, too significant, too like something her dead mother might have told her for her to really mull over right now.    
  
“He doesn't look much like the pictures."   
  
“People always think that when they haven’t visited the Glacier before.” Bodhi folded his hands awkwardly into his pockets. “Not all the Daughters of the Clayr are blonde, and most of them don't go around in gauzy white and moonstone crowns all the time, and hardly any of them have visions every day. Well, from what I've heard Chirrut does. But I've also heard he can beat a squad of Rangers with his bare hands and a broomstick, and I don’t think that's true.”   
  
Jyn assimilated this. “Other Clayr talk about him a lot?”   
  
“Yes,” Bodhi said. “He’s hard to miss.” Bodhi paused thoughtfully. “I think it’s flattering.”   
  
Jyn rubbed her hand over her face. “Well, then. He seems nice. If strange.”

  
  
  
Jyn had a bath in the room a sending directed her to, though not without boggling at the tub, which was the size of a small pond, and which was made of black marble veined with silver. Its taps, Jyn discovered on inspection, had originally been gilded. Her ancestors had had incredibly unsubtle taste, but Jyn would overlook it if it meant a hot bath she could practically swim in, a remarkable luxury next to the chipped enamel and dubious boiler at Wyverley. When she returned to her room wrapped in an enormous dressing gown, she found that the sendings had put out a dress she didn’t recognise and a pair of matching slippers. It hadn’t been in her pack, so must come from the wardrobes here. It was plainer than she had expected, considering the surroundings, and it was dark grey and red with only silver accents: small keys embroidered on the cuffs, hem and neckline. Jyn was surprised, particularly when she tried it on and found that it fit well, though it was perhaps a little shorter than the dressmaker had meant: there was no train as a result, and the front hem hovered just above her toes. There was a red leather belt with it, of a sort that tied rather than buckling; Jyn attempted to work this out and settled on a knot she was sure wasn’t right but would have to do. She glanced at herself in the mirror and was surprised by the effect: ignoring the infelicitous belt, she looked taller and older, and the red and grey swirling together to the floor flattered both her figure and her complexion. She pulled her mother’s medallion out from its hiding place and let it hang outside her dress, and found that it rested perfectly, three or four inches below the neckline.    
  
She hesitated, then turned on her heel and spun self-consciously. She had never been a very good dancer - she’d certainly never gone to formal parties the way a few lucky other girls had, dressed up in beaded gowns that fluttered daringly around their shins or solemn and innocent in pearls for society pictures - but the silk of the skirt spun and whispered satisfyingly, twisting around her hips and knees.   
  
“All right,” Jyn murmured, smoothing suddenly shaky, nervous hands down the fronts of her thighs. “All right.”   
  
She hitched the belt a little higher, and tried to turn it so that the cats’ heads faced forwards. The real cat they represented had deigned to climb out of Jyn’s pack only for so long as it took him to find a comfortable bed on a dark blue velvet cushion, now covered in white cat hairs, but when she opened the door he raised his head and looked at her through acid-green eyes as thin as knives.    
  
“Very nice,” he said, almost clinically. “I wonder what made the sendings get that out for you? Very formal by the Glacier’s standards. They must think you’re dining with the Regent.”   
  
Jyn knew she wasn’t, per the note Mon Mothma had sent, which she’d unsealed and opened before bathing. Perhaps nobody had remembered to tell the sendings. She looked down at herself. “It fits.”   
  
“They wouldn’t have had to tailor it.” Mogget yawned enormously. “It was your mother’s. You’re a little taller than she was, but otherwise very similarly built.”   
  
Jyn’s breath stopped, hitched uncertainly, and then restarted again. She ran her hands over the silk once more, and thought it felt friendly, felt familiar. “I like her taste.”   
  
“She was a likeable woman.” Mogget closed his eyes again. “You’ve got the belt wrong, though.”   
  
“How,” Jyn began, suddenly anxious to get this right, hands flying to the belt at her waist.   
  
Mogget snuggled into a tighter ball, a frankly demonic little smile on his feline face. Jyn huffed in irritation and swung the door open again.   
  
“Ask your Regency friend,” Mogget suggested, in a sleepy, malicious whisper. “I’m sure he’d be more than happy to help.”   
  
Jyn felt a flush rise in her cheeks. “Bloody cat,” she said venomously, and slammed the bedroom door.   
  


  
She and Bodhi had a quiet meal, brought to them in the Abhorsen’s suite itself; all of it well made and savoury, none of it too delicate. From what Bodhi volunteered - and based on the few words he let slip during the meal, Jyn was sure he hadn’t always eaten at the Lower Refectory when he came to the Clayr’s Glacier - the menu had been planned along things her father liked to eat. Apparently Galen was always tired and hungry from his work, and the kind of delicacies favoured at court for the purposes of vanity had regularly left him sneaking down to the kitchens to ask for cheese on toast. The Daughters of the Clayr, by contrast, had fed him as well as the Wallmakers.   
  
Jyn, imagining the tall, dignified and enigmatic man she had so rarely seen trying to cover a rumble of his stomach while hankering after toasted cheese, nearly choked on her rabbit stew. Bodhi looked very worried for a minute, but then it became clear she was laughing, and he relaxed.    
  
Jyn wiped away a couple of small tears. “I don’t,” she said, “I don’t know any of those stories about him.” She picked at a green salad and a tangle of sweetly roasted root vegetables, then sipped cautiously at a glass of sharp white wine; she had tasted alcohol before, but only in an experimental sense. All of it had been vile and Saw hadn’t been sympathetic. “I don’t see much of him.”   
  
“He was always… afraid,” Bodhi said. “Of drawing attention to you. I think he wanted Wallmaker Krennic to think you didn’t matter.” He fell silent, and toyed with his food. He was eating fish in some creamy mushroom sauce, now soaking into fluffy grains; Jyn had tried it, but preferred the rabbit.   
  
She took a deep breath and wiped her fingers deliberately on her napkin, thinking of her mother’s medallion, her father’s sword. They cared. They both cared.    
  
Her father was still alive to care, and Jyn fully intended to make sure he stayed that way.   
  
“He didn’t trust Krennic,” she said finally, trusting her voice to be level after years of casually waving off queries about her absent parents.    
  
Bodhi, mid-mouthful, shook his head and helped himself to a gulp of white wine that drained his goblet. The sending nearby resupplied him. “No, he didn’t.” Bodhi ran his fingers absently around the rim of the cup. “He said that after Ly- after your mother died, he started to look more closely, and tally up the lies. There were a lot of lies. But proof…”   
  
Jyn said nothing.    
  
“He was proud of you,” Bodhi said at last. “I knew he trusted me when he started to tell me about you.”   
  
Jyn stared at her plate. She carefully arranged her remaining stew, vegetables and salad into neatly combined chunks, and ate each mouthful very precisely, one by one. All of them choked her on the way down.   
  
_ Happy 18th birthday, Jyn. _   
  
Jyn’s vision wobbled, like she was seeing through warped glass, and she blinked steadily to clear it.    
  
“Galen and…” Bodhi started, sounding hesitant again. Jyn listened carefully, and heard his tongue catching the way it had when they had first spoken. Someone had forced him to speak about her father for a long time. “Galen and I… um…”   
  
“I know,” Jyn said, raising her head.    
  
“Oh,” Bodhi said, a measure of relief in his voice. “You don’t mind?”   
  
Jyn straightened, and the medallion swung against her chest. She thought about how she felt now - a little surprised he’d admitted it, totally unshocked by the admission itself, vaguely hollow - and about the bitter resentment that had wound around her heart when she thought her father had thrown her away and chosen Bodhi instead.   
  
Maybe she ought to care more; maybe she ought to feel more than a distant sadness. Maybe a better daughter would be angrier. But her mother had been dead for ten years, and no-one could say Galen Erso hadn’t mourned.   
  
“No,” she said, and watched relief spread across Bodhi’s face.   
  
“Good,” Bodhi said, softly, awkwardly. “That's good.”   
  
The sendings cleared the plates and brought a sweet course of thick, rich toffee pudding, berries on the side and cheese on a small round wooden board in case one of them should prefer something different. Jyn considered the thinness of her meals over the last two days, and the strong probability that full meals would be equally hard to come by in the near future, and served herself as much of both as she could eat, along with a small glass of red wine that she approached cautiously. She knew red wine was more likely to give her a headache the next day than white, and the Regent’s note had warned her of a mid-morning meeting.    
  
“Tell me about yourself,” Jyn said. Bodhi was addressing himself to the cheese, and didn’t react for a second - but when he did he looked at her in surprise.   
  
“There’s not much to tell.”   
  
“I don’t know anything about what it’s like to grow up in the Old Kingdom,” Jyn said. “Tell me what it was like for you.”   
  
She listened to Bodhi until the place settings were cleared away and her eyes grew heavy. And then she asked for a hot drink, and went to bed.   
  
Her mother’s dress lay draped carefully over a chair, and her mother’s medallion fell loosely against her ribs, Jyn’s hands clutching at it sporadically in her sleep. She dreamed of Paperwings and boats and horses, of Abhorsen’s House and Belisaere and the small towns and villages Bodhi had described, of the flat silvery Delta and the high plateau; of parents who could still look at each other and laugh with their daughter, and the Charter welling up warm and golden at the slightest touch.   
  
Jyn woke disorientated, and - for several long moments - wondered why she wasn’t in her narrow dormitory bed in Ancelstierre.   



	9. Chapter 9

It turned out that she had woken early. When she padded softly out into the main room, a heavy blue dressing gown wrapped around her thin nightdress, she squinted out of the main window and determined that the sky was grey, only just turning pink with dawn. She yawned, and wondered about going back to bed; but it seemed unlikely that she would sleep again, so she went back into her room to wash her face and hands with water from the ewer, and helped herself to clean linen underwear before hesitating over her clothes. Her meeting with the Regent, and its importance to her father’s survival, meant she needed to be taken seriously; she wanted to wear her mother’s dress again, but would they look at her and see an Abhorsen-in-Waiting, if she dressed in red and grey?  
  
Jyn bit her lip so hard her teeth left little straight dents in her own flesh, and ran her fingers lightly over the dress. She hung it up in the armoire, full of sweet-scented cedar, and chose instead a pair of soft grey woollen leggings which paired with soft black calf-high boots that almost fit and a long full-sleeved linen shirt, the tight cuffs graced with pearl buttons and silverwork embroidery, and a blue and silver tabard that fell to just above her knees. Jyn stared at herself in the mirror and wondered if she looked sufficiently Abhorsen-like or just uncomfortable, and briskly combed and knotted her hair in order to avoid thinking about it too hard. She could at least wear the red leather belt, so she did, looping it back round her waist. Bodhi had explained how it was supposed to work; she hadn't told him about Mogget's insinuating remarks on the subject of Captain Andor.   
  
When she went out into the central room again, she discovered it was not much beyond dawn; the pink light was now diffusing through the sky, glancing off the icy blue expanse of the glacier, but the light was still dim, a promise more than a reality. There was a tiny shuffling noise and a discreet knock against one wall, and Jyn looked around to see a sending, bearing a tray with some kind of steaming cup and what looked like a sweet roll and an apple. Jyn thanked the sending automatically, though she knew it couldn’t hear, wolfed down the roll in two bites and took the apple and the cup. The apple was small, and similarly swiftly disposed of. Jyn sipped at the tea, considered what she could do to gain an advantage in the time available to her, and then asked the sending a question.   
  
“Where’s the Great Library of the Clayr?”

 

  
Two minutes later, armed with the remainder of her tea and a small map pulled from a drawer of one of the oversized mahogany armoires, Jyn ventured into the hallways of the Clayr. It was quiet still, and it took several minutes before she left the broad corridors around the Abhorsen’s rooms and reached busier areas; even there, only a few Daughters of the Clayr were on the move, all of them plainly headed towards some kind of practical work. One of them smiled at Jyn, and Jyn, surprised, smiled back; it felt curiously rusty, as rusty as her laughter had been the night before, even though she had smiled often enough in Saw’s care, or at Wyverley College.   
  
Disconcerted by this realisation, Jyn lost her way to the library, and had to retrace her footsteps back one turn and walk along a long blank stretch of wall before finally reaching the library’s deceptively small, well-polished doors, probably half again as high as Jyn was tall, and carved with scenes from - Jyn squinted - possibly the Old Kingdom’s history?   
  
Jyn realised, with a pang of shame, that she couldn’t remember much more than the Five Great Charters, various fairytales about Holehallow and the royal ships, and assorted gruesome Abhorsen stories told to her for educational purposes. Saw hadn’t known any more than that; her father had never bothered to tell her more, always focussed on imparting the Abhorsen’s skills and duties to his acknowledged successor.   
  
Jyn touched her fingers to her Charter mark and pressed her hand flat against a bronze plate on one of the doors. It swung open, and Jyn found herself in an immense room, half-full of librarians in coloured waistcoats, lined entirely with bookshelves, and packed with well-lit desks and trolleys for sorting. Jyn was almost dizzied by its scale; it seemed larger than a cathedral she’d once visited on an ill-fated school trip, even though it couldn’t possibly be. The great spiral staircase in the centre, with its many bridges and gantries out to shelves that were high up or far away, and its Charter-spelled winches and pulleys for lifting carts of books up as far as the distant ceiling, was the size of a sinkhole - and as Jyn peered across to where it disappeared into the depths, she suspected that its lower reaches were actually far greater than this main room. The visible curve of the staircase suggested that it actually encircled the room a floor below, rather than twisting within its diameter.   
  
Bronze signs announced that Daughters of the Clayr under the age of eighteen required special permission for unsupervised visits to the Non-Fiction Department or the Galleries, with the exception of the volumes to be found on the purple shelves, and that no Daughter of the Clayr was to venture outside the Main Reading Room unaccompanied by a librarian without written permission from the Chief Librarian. Jyn was forcibly reminded of the Perimeter, and hoped they were just being cautious.   
  
The entrance was on a slightly raised mezzanine level, the three or four steps to the main room guarded by a young librarian in a blue waistcoat who had looked as if she was about to fall asleep until she’d spotted Jyn and sat up with a jerk.   
  
“Good morning,” she said, sounding faintly awed. “Abhorsen.”   
  
Jyn eyed her, and decided that she couldn’t be less than twenty-five, though the rather protuberant blue eyes and rounded chin made her look younger, and her current air of wide-eyed fascination made eighteen-year-old Jyn feel a decade older.   
  
“Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” she corrected, with a slight smile. “I’d like to visit the Library.”   
  
“Of course,” the librarian said enthusiastically. “Did you have a volume in mind? Or a topic you wanted to research? Considering the things you might need, I may need to ask a Deputy to assist you, but if I can help I’d be happy -”   
  
“I’d like to see my father’s notes,” Jyn said. “I know he deposited his work here.”   
  
“Oh,” said the librarian, and there was a small, daunted pause.   
  
Jyn raised a suspicious eyebrow.   
  
“I think you’d better see the Chief,” the librarian said finally. “He won’t have gone to the Watch yet. The  Waking Bell hasn’t rung. I just hope he’s in his study.”   
  
“I’ll be here,” Jyn said, hoping the woman would go and she’d be able to stroll in. But the librarian called  a younger woman over, this one wearing a yellow waistcoat, and told her - with an air of great importance - to carry a message to the Chief.   
  
Jyn waited while the girl in the yellow waistcoat scuttled off, and did her best to answer the librarian’s questions politely. The librarian discovered relatively quickly that Jyn had lived in Ancelstierre, and become fascinated; Jyn was subjected to a detailed quiz on Ancelstierran lifeways, and tried to answer fairly. She felt herself growing impatient, and knew she wasn’t giving as much detail as the librarian would like. She tried to stop herself snapping, or glancing over her shoulder.   
  
“- I understand that their approach to machinery,” the librarian was saying with great enthusiasm, when she suddenly broke off, her eyes widening. “Chief Librarian - it must be almost the Waking Bell.”   
  
“The Watch is excused,” said a familiar voice, and Jyn tried to control the widening of her eyes as she followed the librarian’s gaze. Chirrut, Voice of the Nine Day Watch, was smiling directly at her. The small librarian in the yellow waistcoat was ahead of him, and a broadly-built man in leather and spelled armour was half a pace behind his shoulder. “For this one day. The Voice of the Clayr needs to be heard more widely than the seclusion of the Watch will allow. Thank you, Yira. Your shift must be over now; you have leave to go.”   
  
Jyn, fascinated, thought that it didn’t sound like a question. Yira shuffled, and looked reluctant to quit her post; but perhaps she made too much noise doing so or perhaps Chirrut had other ways of seeing, because he raised his eyebrows and looked expectant until Yira flushed, said “Yes, sir,” and left her post.   
  
Chirrut turned his friendly smile on the smaller librarian, and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You too, Gaelle. Thank you for bringing the message.”   
  
The librarian smiled back at him, like the sunshine. “You’re welcome, Chief,” she said, and darted away.   
  
The Main Reading Room had gone quiet, librarians drawing away from their chief. Jyn descended the stairs to meet the Voice and the man who stood behind him - a wary one, Jyn thought as she met his eye; someone quicker to scowl than to smile, like Saw.   
  
“Good morning,” she said, and heard in the distance a faint clamour, something bright and ringing. “Is that -”   
  
“The Waking Bell? Yes. It can be heard from here, generally.” The Voice folded his hands before him, over the silk-covered waistcoat all the librarians seemed to wear. His was black, which Jyn supposed signalled his rank. He had a stillness to him, a calmness, that Jyn wished she could copy - even if she suspected that she was more like his irascible companion. “It signals the beginning of a Clayr’s day. Although these librarians, of course -” he nodded at the people moving around them rapidly and efficiently, their places being taken by new librarians as Jyn watched - “have been doing night rounds.”   
  
“Libraries need night staff?”   
  
The broad man behind Chirrut snorted a half-laugh. “Libraries with collections like this one do, Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”   
  
“How could I forget?” Chirrut said, smiling even more broadly. “Abhorsen-in-Waiting, allow me to present Captain Baze, one of our Rangers.”   
  
Jyn bowed a little awkwardly, and Captain Baze bowed in return.   
  
“Call me Baze,” he said gruffly. “You’re not a Ranger.”   
  
“Call me Jyn,” Jyn answered, and then added - “And you can too, of course - Master Chirrut.”   
  
“Just Chirrut,” the Voice of the Nine-Day Watch said cheerily, as if formality was alien to him.

  
  
  
Chirrut and Baze led Jyn to a large, oak-panelled office lined with large volumes that looked to be series of records. A spelled sword sat in a display bracket, and a painted trompe l’oeil view showed a series of tall turreted buildings looking out over a shining sea, rising high above a city.   
  
“The University in Belisaere,” Baze said, watching where her eyes fell. He let out a guttural noise of scepticism. “What’s left of it. You’d be better off at the Collegium in High Bridge.”   
  
“I thought about going south,” Jyn admitted, “to Sunbere. But…”   
  
“What would you learn there that you need here?” Baze rumbled, and stuffed his hands into his capacious pockets.   
  
Jyn’s eyes rested on the sword, and a heavily-spelled safe set into the wall. “Good question.”   
  
"Knowledge is always useful," Chirrut pronounced, taking a seat at his desk. The heavily-spelled staff had a bracket of its own, right by his chair; Jyn wondered if it was, in some way, a tool of his office. "You of all people should know that, Baze."   
  
Jyn stayed uncomfortably silent. Baze huffed and dropped down into a chair that looked as if he had often crashed into it, and Jyn took the remaining seat herself.   
  
"So," Chirrut said, turning his face to Jyn. "What brings the Abhorsen-in-Waiting here, well before most of the Glacier has awoken, to speak with the Chief Librarian?"   
  
"I would like to see my father's notes," Jyn said. "I know not all of them were deposited here - but some were. And I need to know everything he knew, or suspected he knew, about Orson Krennic and his weapons." She took a deep breath, and thought about the notebooks that had been searched in the Abhorsen's study. Very little of it had been written  _en clair_ ; she hoped her father hadn’t coded everything he ever wrote. "I have read some of my father's writing about the - the case. I'm hoping to find more. And I have the rest of the morning to search, before the meeting."   
  
"Several hours," Chirrut nodded. "Well, there is no reason such a request should not be granted." He opened a drawer and pulled out a silver token with some kind of rough green stone set in it, the whole hung on a steel chain. He cast some kind of spell over it, a quick gesture Jyn couldn't follow, and the stone shone as it took on whatever the cantrip had been. "This will allow you access to the relevant levels. Baze..."   
  
"No," Baze rumbled. "She came unarmed."   
  
"In Ancelstierre, libraries are a strictly weapon-free zone," Jyn said, accepting the token when it was handed to her. "Are my ancestors' papers dangerous?"   
  
"Generally not," Chirrut said seriously, "And they don't tend to lodge Free Magic creatures with us for study. But as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, you are granted access to some of our more... dangerous levels."   
  
Jyn stared at him and then Baze, who shifted in his seat and raised his eyebrows at her. "What are you keeping in here?" she said, struggling to hide her growing disbelief.   
  
"It would be faster," Chirrut said serenely, "if I were to tell you what we don't keep here."   
  
There was a brisk knock on the door, and then an elderly woman in a practical, lightly stained green shirt and trousers with a silver Charter symbol for healing stitched onto the left breast opened the door.   
  
"Ah, Jocasta," Chirrut said, grinning.   
  
"How did you know?" Jyn exclaimed, and then cursed herself. Obviously he did know, and it was none of her business how.   
  
"Most people wait to check I'm actually here," Chirrut said, leaning back and folding his hands over his stomach. "Jocasta treats me with the absence of reverence I deserve. Abhorsen-in-Waiting, may I introduce my predecessor as Chief Librarian, and a current leading light in our Halls of Healing? Jocasta, this is the Abhorsen-in-Waiting."   
  
Jyn rose and bowed awkwardly to Jocasta, whose return bow was all fluid grace.   
  
"It's about that parcel of precious Second Assistant Idiots with the spell exhaustion, Chirrut," Jocasta said. "I was hoping to get to you before the business of the day began."   
  
"The Abhorsen-in-Waiting was just leaving." Chirrut turned his head to Baze. "Baze, please lend the Abhorsen-in-Waiting a weapon of her choice and any assistance she requires."   
  
"For all you know I could be busy this morning," Baze grumbled, rising from his seat.   
  
"You could," Chirrut said, obviously amused. "But you aren't." He said something teasing in a language Jyn didn't know, and Baze snorted explosively, collected Jyn with a glance, and jerked his head at the door. She got up and followed him to the exit.   
  
"I don't need help," she said, as Baze led her down two corridors, around a corner and into a well-stocked armoury. Curtained doorways, the curtains held back by brightly coloured sashes with heavy black numbers hanging from them, led through to other stores; serried ranks of waistcoats, shelves and shelves of tiny silver mice. "If you're busy, you don't have to stay."   
  
"I'm not busy," Baze said, wandering purposefully down the stores. "And it's easy to get lost in here. It would be embarrassing if we had to send out a rescue party for you. What do you use?"   
  
"A sword, mostly. And it might embarrass me, but surely not you or Chirrut." Jyn watched as Baze selected a short sword, drew it, tested its edge and sent her an assessing glance before setting it back onto the rack and handing another, slightly larger, to her. He also passed her a swordbelt, which went oddly with the red belt she was already wearing; Jyn tied the red one higher and pretended it didn't look strange.   
  
"The Regent gets understanding when people make mistakes. It annoys the Council of Daughters like you wouldn’t believe - except for Chirrut, who thinks she's funny. And there's always a price for it." Baze grunted, checking over his own weapons. "Generally heavier than the Council likes to pay."   
  
"Can't be comfortable, having a government in exile here."   
  
"It's not. I'm on the verge of going to kill Krennic myself just to get them out of our hair."   
  
Jyn choked with unexpected laughter. Baze grinned humourlessly, and then paused and cleared his throat.   
  
"The Abhorsens' papers are on level six. Restricted. But I don't think that's the first place you should look."   
  
Jyn stilled in the act of checking her borrowed sword. "Why?"   
  
"The last time your father came into the Glacier he arrived on foot, in the middle of the night." Baze shook his head. "No-one else would dare, not these days. But he was in a rush. Said he'd crashed his Paperwing."   
  
_So that's what happened to the third Paperwing from Abhorsen's House_ , Jyn thought, almost dizzily.   
  
Base folded his arms. "He wanted in to the Library. Wouldn't take no for an answer. The Chief Ranger sent me to wake up Chirrut; Chirrut let him into the Library. He didn’t go for the Abhorsens' papers. He went into the Wallmaker archives, and didn't come out till dawn. He borrowed a Paperwing and left."   
  
"The Wallmaker archives?" Jyn repeated, staring at Baze. "Why -"   
  
_Orson Krennic is the Wallmaker. Krennic was my father's friend. He’s built a weapon that channels Free Magic._  
  
Her father the inventor. Had he and Krennic designed something, in the years of their collaboration before Krennic turned to evil, that could have been turned into the weapon Krennic had fired?   
  
"Where are the Wallmaker archives?" Jyn said. "And how do I find the patents?" 


	10. Chapter 10

It took Jyn more time than she wanted to think about to locate the shelf her father must have known how to reach easily. Unlike her, he had been a regular user of the Library, familiar with the format of its archives, and well aware of context details about the exact patent he was looking for. Though he might not have had a copy at home - must not have done, or he would have left it there for Jyn - a sign at the entry to the patent archives explained that per legal obligation exact copies of all patents were filed at the Collegium in High Bridge, the University in Belisaere, and the Ratterlin Settlement. The text and blueprints would have been perfectly safe here, and her father had probably consulted them, or other patents, before.   
  


The patents were all in a block of rooms, organised by date and name, but without knowing when exactly the patent in question had been filed and whether it had been filed under her father's name or Krennic's it wasn't easy to work out which one she was looking for. For lack of any better ideas - and for lack of time - Jyn hauled out the ledger that indexed the patents filed by the Wallmakers for the year her father had turned eighteen, and started moving forwards, looking for patents filed jointly by her father and Krennic. She got through four ledgers before she found the one she wanted. 

  
  
Galen Erso's last patents with Krennic had been filed when Jyn was four. He had collaborated with Krennic over a period of nearly twenty-five years; they had always worked together. They listed very few sole patents, and none with other collaborators. But the patents grew fewer and further apart after Galen began to identify himself as  _ Erso, Galen (52A) _ , and by the time Jyn was born they were almost nonexistent. A single patent, filed the year of her birth, was labelled Project Stardust.   


  
"Stardust," Jyn breathed, and ran a shaking finger along the line for the case and shelf number. She picked it up, and ran for the shelf in question.

  
  
Baze, who had apparently been dozing in a chair near the desk she was working at, raised his head. "Did you find it?"

  
  
Jyn, now in a different room and far enough away that new glowing Charter lights bloomed in response to her movement, didn’t answer. She found the case and hurried along to the shelf, flipping hastily through the thick files, collections of blueprints and protocols and Charter notations and -   


  
One file was as thin as a few pieces of paper. Jyn's heart sank like a stone.   


  
The spine read _Project Stardust_. 

  
  
She pulled it out, and found that only a few pages of notations - most of them encompassing master marks she wouldn't have cared to try without a few weeks' run-up - were left: only a few pages of notations and a scrap of rough paper, scribbled over with scratched-out coded notes, and bearing a glowing Charter mark.

  
  
Jyn pulled the piece of paper out, and, dazed, touched her finger to her forehead mark and then to the mark on the paper. She slid the file back onto the shelf, and listened to her father clear his throat.   
  


"Jyn. I don't know if you'll come here. It seems more likely that you will try to find me using the notes I left in the cellar, but you could make worse moves. I hope it's not because the Regent tried to compel you, but if it is, ask Chirrut Îmwe for help. He won't let you down."   
  
Galen cleared his throat again. "If you are here, Jyn, I know what the weapon is now. Before you were born Orson and I were working on a machine that used crystals and mirrors to focus Charter Magic, to create a more targeted, scaled-up method of defence from Dead attacks than single Charter mages. It was supposed to be something any few good Charter mages could use, to increase towns' and villages' capacity for self-defence. I wanted it to be my legacy. That's why I named it after you, my stardust." Galen's intake of breath was shaky - with anger, with fear, with fury, Jyn didn't know her father well enough to be sure. "I think Krennic repurposed it to use with Free Magic.  The blueprints that were here are flawed copies that can’t be used to reproduce our design, and he doesn’t forge my hand as well as he thinks he does - and the machine I remember explains Bail and Breha's deaths too well. I've gone to Belisaere to confront him with the false blueprints and to destroy this abomination.   


  
"This is what we have to fight, stardust. It's a machine that focusses Free Magic and fires it. It can do so from miles away, and hit any target, provided it is in the line of sight. It needs a tower, if it’s to be used from far away. He used one of the Belisaere lighthouses to kill the Regents, but that was a test as much as anything else. I think, given enough power - and if Krennic's in league with the Emperor he will have enough power - he could even take down the Wall with this."   


  
Jyn gave a full-body shudder; the paper crinkled in her fingers, and she swayed without knowing she did so.   


  
"If you can't find me in Belisaere, Jyn, find Krennic, find the machine, and destroy it. You only need to break the focussing mirror. It's concave: strike it in the centre from behind and it will shatter. The whole machine will explode. Scrap and magic."   


  
Jyn forced her hand open and stared at the flaring Charter mark. It blurred out of focus under her eyes; she could feel her face crumpling.   


  
"I hope you never hear this. I hope I get there first. I'm leaving now, for the Wallmakers' House at Belisaere. If Orson's not there, I'll go south, follow his bases closer to the eastern shoreline. He must be keeping it on or near the coast; it's too cumbersome to transfer easily over land."   


  
Galen took a deep breath. "I love you, stardust. Be careful. I know you will be brave."   


  
Jyn strained her ears into the silence to hear more, and then let out a sob as she realised the message was over. One followed another; she heard the calls of her name and approaching footsteps but was helpless to respond until Captain Andor and Baze came right up to her, and Captain Andor touched her shoulder.    


  
"What happened?" Captain Andor demanded. "What is it?"   


  
Jyn sniffled, and wiped her eyes and nose inelegantly with the back of her hand. "I know what the weapon is. Krennic remade something he'd designed with my father."   


  
Captain Andor grabbed for the files on the shelf.   


  
"He took them," Jyn said. "My father took the blueprints. He said they were fakes and Krennic took the real ones. But he told me how to - ow! Fuck!"   


  
The paper in her hand had burst into flames. Jyn dropped it reflexively, shaking her burned hand, and Baze shoved forward and stamped on it until it fell to ashes.   


  
"Poor quality paper and a long speaking spell," Baze rumbled. "He must have been in a hurry."   


  
"He was. He went to Belisaere, to confront Krennic." Jyn sucked at her hand, and distractedly began to sketch a healing spell with the fingers of the other. Captain Andor pushed her casting hand aside gently, and applied the same quick healing spell he had done before: her palm stopped smarting, and the redness drained away. Jyn was too distracted to notice the pain ebb, but it did. "It was supposed to be a weapon for towns to defend themselves against the Dead, by amplifying Charter magic. Krennic changed it. It works best from a height, but so long as whatever Krennic wants to destroy is in its line of sight, it can do it. It uses a mirror for focussing - if we just break the mirror, my father told me how -"   


  
"Slow down," Baze said. "This is all in the message?"   


  
Jyn nodded rapidly. "My father thinks it could even destroy the Wall. He went to Belisaere to stop Krennic.  He says the machine must be being moved by boat along the coast, and the regents were killed from one of the lighthouses in Belisaere. We can catch up to them and stop it before Krennic gets as far as the Wall - my father says it's easy to break -"   
  


"If you can reach it," Baze said darkly. His eyes were on Captain Andor's hawklike face, which had gone curiously still.   


  
"Is there a copy of the message?" Captain Andor asked.    


  
"No," Jyn said. "No, I - no? I didn't know it would burn up."   


  
Captain Andor turned sharply to Baze. "Did you hear it?"   


  
Baze shook his head.   
  


"I heard it!" Jyn said. "It was real!"   
  


"I believe you," Captain Andor said, but his bright dark eyes were heavy with knowledge. "But I was sent to find you because Regent Mothma has brought the meeting forward. News has just come from Nestowe on the coast. It was wiped out, all but a few fishers, by something that came from the sea, which looked and smelled like Free Magic fire."   


  
Jyn's knees buckled.   
  


"Nestowe is known because a number of the Charter blood Wallmakers settled there after leaving the Ratterlin settlement," Captain Andor continued. "Many of them were known rivals of Orson Krennic, and - when he was principally an inventor - Galen Erso. The rivalry was allegedly friendlier on Erso’s side than Krennic’s."   
  


Jyn started at him, open-mouthed and oxygenless. "No. _No_."   
  


"The Regency Council will say that your father was killed trying to stop Krennic, or has been twisted to Krennic's ends," Captain Andor continued inexorably. "If Krennic is truly a user of Free Magic and a necromancer, it is possible."   
  


Jyn ripped her hand from his loose grip. "It's not true! He's not dead, I know he isn't, and he would never -"   
  


"I believe you," Captain Andor said, his face made of stone. "It's not me you have to convince."   
  


 

“I was sent to bring you to the meeting,” Captain Andor said, following hastily after Jyn as she stormed out of the library, Baze not far behind. “If you’ll slow down for half a minute I can show you where it is!”

 

Jyn stopped, and gave Captain Andor a sweeping glance up and down borrowed from the snootiest of her classmates, one intended to sting. It wasn’t hard to feel contemptuous; he had shaved, slicked his hair back in a singularly unflattering manner, and dressed himself in what she correctly suspected was the uniform of Regency officialdom, bland olive wool with the Regency’s white badge on the left breast of his tunic. He looked pointy and oleaginous as a consequence - or maybe that was just Jyn’s temper talking. “I wouldn’t have thought it was any of your business.”

 

Captain Andor’s jaw tightened. “I imagine even you can be surprised, Abhorsen.”

 

“Abhorsen  _ in Waiting _ .” Jyn started to walk again, and then remembered she was wearing a sword. She went to take it off. “Baze -”

 

“You don’t have time to take that back to wherever it came from. The meeting is starting now. If you want to speak for your father -”

 

“It’s only polite,” Jyn sneered, “and if it’s so important I be there, then they can wait for the assigned time, or for me.”

 

“That is not how -”

 

“Both of you shut up,” Baze rumbled. “Jyn, give me the sword. Captain Andor, watch your mouth.”

 

Captain Andor shut his mouth with a snap. Jyn handed her sword and belt to Baze, trying not to smirk.

 

“Give me one good reason,” she said softly to Captain Andor, “why I should break a sweat getting to this stupid thing when I already know what I have to do, where I have to go to do it, and how to go and get it done.”

 

“Because members of the Regent’s Council have been arguing for your father’s death for months,” Captain Andor said, taking a step closer. Jyn’s breath shot from her chest for the second time in the last half an hour, and she fell back a step, eyes widening so much she felt them begin to dry. “This is your one chance to stop them. And…”

 

“And?” Jyn demanded, trying to force some air back into her lungs. 

 

Captain Andor looked uncomfortable, even ashamed. “When Bodhi realised what the meeting must be about, he insisted on attending. General Draven is also there.”

 

“You left Bodhi alone in the same room as Draven? You didn’t tell him to  _ wait for me _ ?”

 

“I did. He objected. Mogget and Kay are with him.”

 

“Have you  _ met  _ Mogget? That isn’t a guarantee of anything! Except mayhem!” Jyn whirled on her heel. “Where is this stupid meeting?”

 

“I must assume it’s in the Voice’s Solar,” Baze said. He had disappeared the swordbelt somewhere, probably into one of his many capacious pockets, and added the sword to what Jyn now realised was an intimidating roster of other weaponry. “Follow me.”

 

 

Jyn marched after Baze, out of the Library, down a long corridor, round a sharp left turn by a fountain, through what she strongly suspected to be a secret passage, and then up a narrow, winding staircase that - after an amount of time that left Jyn’s calves and thighs burning and Captain Andor audibly huffing for breath, but had no perceptible effect on Baze - took them to a tiny whitewashed and dusty antechamber, where a small narrow doorway was covered by a thick curtain. Going by the hem, it was probably heavy green velvet on the other side. But muffled noise still filtered through, and Jyn stopped, one foot half off the floor, as the words being spoken - or, more accurately, shouted - began to filter through.

 

 “- the Abhorsen has betrayed us, has broken his vows to the Kingdom, and we need to move against him and the Wallmaker before it’s too late. Either we act now, or we face a fallen Abhorsen. If he’s not already dead, then -”

 

Jyn shoved forward, pushing past Baze, and wrenching the curtain back, forcing herself into a round room painted in green and white, silver constellations marked onto its grey domed ceiling. Charter lamps shone from evenly spaced alcoves, and the dark green carpet patterned in pale grey was thick and lush under Jyn’s boots. 

 

It was a large space, and the Regency Council combined with the Council of Daughters did not fill it: the round, highly polished marble table was filled at every place, but the room was still more than half-empty. Bodhi was making himself as inconspicuous as possible; Mogget was sitting at his feet. Jyn had emerged at the back of a dais with a high-backed dark wooden chair on it, which didn’t fit with the room and looked as if it had been hastily constructed. She assumed, from the edge of a white gown she could see trailing from the chair, that she’d emerged behind the Regent. Her boots were soft and no-one was looking into the shadow of the chair, easily more than Jyn’s height, half a throne; they continued to debate the best ways to kill her father, supposing he were not a hostage. The Clayr, identifiable by their distinctive looks and plainer, more practical clothing, were taking little part in the argument.

 

“Then I suppose I’d better rescue him,” she said, extremely loudly, “hadn’t I?”

 

There was a certain amount of yelping and rustling and gasping as everyone assimilated her sudden appearance: Jyn, embarrassed by the attention, folded her arms and tried not to hunch her shoulders. At least Bodhi looked pleased to see her, and Mogget looked entertained.

 

“And who,” said a man with a prominent nose and a blue suit of clothing, “are  _ you _ ?”

 

“My name is Jyn Erso,” Jyn said. “I’m the Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”

 

“The Abhorsen-in-Waiting is at school in Ancelstierre,” said a straight-backed lady whose brown skin gleamed under a golden hooded cloak. Her high clear voice was full of suspicion; Jyn remembered Captain Andor saying nobody would believe she was who she said she was, and winced internally. “Or so we’ve always been told.”

 

“Well, I  _ was _ , until somebody bothered to come south and tell me my father had disappeared.” Jyn stepped forward. “Regent Mothma sent for me to find out what happened to my father.”

 

“It seemed like a very reasonable step to take, Lord Vaspar, Chancellor Pamlo,” said a voice from the dais. “More reasonable than assuming the present Abhorsen to be guilty of the abuse of Free Magic and complicity in the crimes of his wife’s murderer.”

 

Jyn looked sideways, and found herself under the cool gaze of a red-haired woman in her late forties, serenely implacable and dressed in heavily embroidered flowing white, with a silver Charter medallion emphasising her mastery of the Charter hanging from her neck. Jyn’s own was far less ostentatious, but then, Lyra Erso had been a village mage before her marriage. Most of the people in this room probably looked down on that. She wondered if that annoyed the notoriously egalitarian Daughters of the Clayr as much as a Regent setting up a dais to sit over them and dressing in ceremonial robes that looked not unlike their own. All she was missing was the moonstone crown.

 

Mon Mothma smiled. “Jyn Erso. We have met, but you were a very little girl. You have your father’s bones - and I hope your mother’s courage.”

 

Jyn bowed, and tried to wipe sweaty palms discreetly on her tabard before remembering that it was silk and that was a bad idea. “I hope so too, Regent Mothma.”

 

“What did you do with Captain Andor?” demanded General Draven, scowling at her from his place at the marble table.

 

“You’d better not have hurt him,” Kay piped up. “We’ve already discussed -”   
  


Jyn felt herself turning red. “Yes we have, and no I didn’t -”    
  


“I’m here, Kay. Sir.” Captain Andor sounded almost endearingly resigned. He moved forward, and bowed to the Regent. “My lady.”

 

“Why the service entrance, captain?” Mon Mothma looked wearily amused. She waved a hand at a pair of enormous pale doors chased in silver. “There is a front door. And I’m sure the Abhorsen-in-Waiting merits its use.”

 

“This was the fastest way,” Baze grumbled, tucking the curtain closed behind him.

 

Chirrut - now wearing the full regalia of the Voice of the Nine Day Watch, Jyn noticed - threw his head back and laughed. “It’s always nice to see you making friends, Baze. I take it you were able to help the Abhorsen-in-Waiting with her research?”   


  
Baze grunted. “She found something.”

 

“I did,” Jyn said. She stepped off the dais, and walked up to the table; she rested her hands on it, and glared at everyone present. “I found my father’s work to determine Krennic’s plan, and locate a weakness in it. He left me a message telling me what he’d done before he left. From what B- Captain Malbus told me, the message must have been placed there four months ago, on his last visit to the Clayr’s Glacier, immediately before he disappeared. I’m going to find him, and free him, and destroy Krennic’s device. My father told me how.”

 

Bodhi’s face was so bright Jyn could hardly bear to look at it.   
  


“Please continue,” Mon Mothma said, her words silver coins in the silence. After the harsh clarion of Jyn’s own voice, the arguing Regency Council had turned to stillness. Maybe this was what it was like to matter.

 

Jyn raised her head, and spoke, and hoped. In the corner Bodhi watched her like her every sentence was priceless, and Kay stared at the ceiling as if this were all meaningless and he’d found a mistake in the constellations. Chirrut smiled at the wall, and Baze loured. 

 

Forced out of the shadows by so light a room, Captain Andor and Mogget lurked with the same bitter look in their eyes: knowledge. Jyn ignored them.

 

The rest of the meeting was an unmitigated disaster. 

 

Chancellor Pamlo argued that Galen Erso’s every action - having designed the weapon (twenty years ago), having failed to identify its trace (when it had never before been built), having failed to warn the Regency (when they had given him no reason to trust them and had nothing to do with Free Magic or necromancy), having left a hasty message that burned up (when there was no time for anything else) - pointed to his guilt. Lord Vaspar refused to believe that such a weapon could exist, and insisted over Chirrut and Jyn’s informed objections that Krennic must have been using Hish again. Draven pointed out that the Wallmaker consulate in Belisaere had been locked down and tightly guarded for months, and if the Abhorsen had gone there, he had not been seen to leave. Several people did not believe in the message once they realise it had burned up and could not be listened to again, and even after a detailed inspection of Jyn’s formerly burned hand, Captain Andor’s testimony that he had healed it, and the Infirmarian’s expert opinion that it had recently been injured and well healed, they persisted in the belief that Jyn was mistaken about the message’s contents. Half the Regency Council seemed to believe that Galen Erso’s involvement in the original design meant he was complicit in Krennic’s actions, especially given the destruction of Nestowe: a disconcerting number of the Daughters of the Clayr allowed that it was possible his mind was no longer his own. Jyn told them she would have noticed. Regent Mothma pointed out, with a gentleness that Jyn hated her for, that Jyn had not seen her father for an extended period of time for a decade, and that there was no reason to believe that Galen Erso had survived his confrontation with Krennic with his mind or his life intact. Jyn was furious not to be able to offer any proof of normal fatherly affection, or of close interaction between the two of them, as some kind of counter - but her father was what he was.

 

Bodhi tried to step forward as a character witness, but recoiled until he hit the wall when General Draven snapped they had already heard everything they wanted to know from Bodhi. Jyn shouted at Draven for that, which improved nothing. Lord Vaspar observed that at least you got reliable information from Draven and the Daughters of the Clayr collectively turned on him, almost drowning out Mon Mothma’s own sharp reprimand. Bodhi wilted at the realisation that his torture was generally known, and retired into Baze’s shadow. 

 

Jyn insisted that she knew her father was alive, and was treated like a stupid child. When she pointed out that the Abhorsen mantle had passed down for centuries without the Abhorsen-in-Waiting ever being mistaken about their role, someone quoted the Diaries of Belatiel the First at her as if their quotation changed the fact that Jyn knew her father to be alive. She wasn’t sure she believed in Belatiel - though Chirrut certainly corroborated the idea that they’d existed when he pointed out the dubious historicity of the memoirs in question - and she was dead certain that the quoter had missed the point.

 

“Can Krennic not be worked on?” suggested Chancellor Pamlo eventually, having firmly fixed it in her mind that Jyn might or might not be correct about her father’s survival but was definitely incapable of ascertaining whether he deserved to live or not - a decision which should apparently be made by a committee of  _ adults _ . (Jyn, accustomed to being among the oldest of her small community, seethed.)

 

“We’re talking about someone who murdered his best friend’s wife,” said the Head Ranger, a woman whose scowl was either permanent or due to her proximity to Draven. “And tried to murder his best friend’s child. That’s not in question. He’s got no better feelings to appeal to.”

 

“The murder of Lyra Erso was never legally proven,” the Chief Magistrate said, producing a temporary kerfuffle and an involuntary snarl from Jyn that made the entire Regency Council bar Mon Mothma look at her like she was dangerous.

 

“Everyone has a lever,” General Draven said grimly.

 

“Everyone,” the Infirmarian said blandly, which made Jyn wonder in the midst of her fury exactly how many Daughters of the Clayr the Regency had contrived to enrage.

 

“Appeasement is an expense we can’t afford,” Mon Mothma said, the first thing Jyn had wholeheartedly agreed with. “We all know Krennic, however vile he may be, is only the Emperor’s tool.”

 

“We can’t fight the Emperor while we’re dealing with Krennic,” Lord Vaspar insisted.

 

“You mean the Abhorsen, or the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, cannot fight the Emperor and Krennic,” Chirrut corrected, with a humour that obviously annoyed Vaspar. “I don’t see anyone else present qualified to go toe to toe with a necromancer of that calibre. And I think she’s entitled to an opinion on the battle plan.”

 

“All she’s got are opinions,” Lord Vaspar complained.

 

“Your lordship,” said Mon Mothma, who looked increasingly as if she had the headache.

 

“She is the cat’s mother,” Jyn snapped, startling everyone present; self-conscious, she realised it was an Ancelstierran idiom and ploughed on. “If your parents didn’t bother to teach you it’s rude to talk nonsense about people who are in the room, then I’ll start.” She slapped the table hard; the marble echoed and her palm stung. “I am the only person here who knows the Abhorsen’s ways. Who wields bells. Who has read the  _ Book of the Dead _ . I know what I’m facing and I know I need my father to help me overcome it. He’s not dead. He wants Krennic dead and his device destroyed, and he’s told me how to make it happen. We don’t have much time before Krennic reaches the Wall. The time to fight is  _ now _ .” Jyn swallowed. “I don’t care if you think I’m a fool. I know what must be done and unlike you I’m not afraid to make it happen.”

 

“You know nothing of the Old Kingdom,” Lord Vaspar retorted, “you know nothing of  _ our _ ways, and your arrogance will be the death of you -”

 

“You say it like she has to do any of this alone,” Bodhi interrupted, speaking louder than Jyn had ever heard him speak, and without stuttering. His northern-dark complexion had turned ashen-sallow with fear, but his eyes were fierce. “Am I enough of a citizen of the Kingdom for you? I know Galen. Jyn’s right. He is fighting Krennic. And you want him dead for it.”

 

“Not what I’d call compelling testimony,” remarked a pinch-faced woman with lacquered bands piling her hair on her head. “The Abhorsen’s daughter and his catam-”

 

Bodhi winced and his jaw tightened from the first hard  _ c _ of the word, but he held his ground as the meeting devolved into an uproar. It was Jyn who leaned forward over the table, fingers digging into the stone as if it would melt beneath her nails, snarling “ _ Finish that sentence, go on, I dare you _ ,” as the woman flinched back in her seat.

 

“Silence,” Chirrut said, Charter Magic spilling from his tongue, and the word echoed and rippled throughout the room until there was a kind of compelled and mutinous quiet. “Lady Moriel. We will not tolerate such conduct.”

 

“I will not be spoken to with such disrespect,” the pinch-faced woman said.

 

“You will not speak to the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, or to Wallmaker Rook, with such disrespect,” Mon Mothma said in her cool voice, chilling where Chirrut frightened by his unaccustomed sternness. Lady Moriel turned sullen, her unpleasant mouth twisting.

 

“At least it should be required that the Abhorsen-in-Waiting does not involve herself in any search for the Abhorsen until we have better information on his whereabouts,” Lord Vaspar bargained. “We can’t afford to lose a second Charter bloodline.”

 

Jyn, indignant, opened her mouth to swear at Lord Vaspar for treating her like some kind of decorative chalice of convenient blood, and found to her surprise that the Daughters of the Clayr had got there first. The Head Ranger sighed loudly and slid down in her seat, the Bursar looked over pince-nez with a sour look to rival Lady Moriel, and the Infirmarian said: “We have discussed this principle repeatedly, Lord Vaspar, I don’t know what good you think you’ll do by bringing it up again.”

 

“As my esteemed colleagues point out,” Chirrut said, with a sort of bland glee, “the Abhorsen-in-Waiting is our cousin, and, as we have several times established with reference to the present Abhorsen, she is free to come and go as she pleases.”

 

“Wallmaker Rook should perhaps remain for his own safety,” Mon Mothma suggested. Bodhi visibly shuddered.

 

“Wallmaker Rook has been brought here as our cousin’s guest, and introduced to the Voice of the Nine Day Watch as such. We are satisfied that he is not criminal, and poses no threat to the Kingdom, and as such, he possesses the same guest rights as any member of this Regency Council.” There was audible discontent, and Chirrut took obvious pleasure in it. “We cannot accommodate your request.”

 

“It was a suggestion,” Regent Mothma said, equally blandly.

 

“That too.”

 

“Fine,” Jyn said, still furious, but soothed to a certain degree by the Council of Daughters’ support and the Regency Council’s irritation. “Bodhi and I will be going, then, as soon as possible.”

 

Mogget leapt onto the table, making the Head Ranger swear and Lady Moriel yelp, and sauntered across its diameter towards Jyn. “I’m coming too,” he informed Jyn, as he reached the edge nearest her. “You make such an interesting mess wherever you go. It makes me quite nostalgic for the original Cassiel.”

 

“Thanks,” Jyn said, more sarcastically than she meant.

 

“Oh, don’t, he was a disaster.” Mogget paused, and looked at Regent Mothma. He was smiling, and even for a cat it wasn’t a nice smile. “You should have mentioned Lyra’s temper as well as her courage.”

 

Regent Mothma said nothing. Mogget gathered his muscles and leapt at Jyn; she only just got her arms up in time to catch him.

 

Jyn left by the curtained entrance, the same way she had arrived. Bodhi followed rapidly after her, and so did Baze, both of them apparently disinclined to remain - though probably for different reasons. Behind them, muffled by that heavy velvet curtain, the room erupted in sound.

 

“Was my mother angry?” Jyn asked, trying to take her mind off the number of people debating the best way to kill her father in the room immediately behind her. “I don’t remember.”

 

“Oh yes,” Mogget said. His claws pricked uncomfortably through the linen of her shirt and silk of her tunic. “She had as many good reasons to be furious as you do. Although I think she managed it better.”

  
“Well,” Jyn said, throat tight, “I can practise.”

 

“If you live,” Mogget said, unhelpfully.

 

“Shut up, Mogget.” 

 

He scratched her.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a callback to a prequel ficlet, [four sees all in frozen water](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14805428), that may interest any Baze/Chirrut fans!

The Daughters of the Clayr were helpful. Jyn asked for provisions, and she received them; she did not ask for, but was offered, supplies. She tried not to burden them too much, aware that they had to live with the Regency Council in their home, but Baze told her that the Abhorsen, a frequent guest, had been well-liked and trusted here. Jyn’s eyes welled up at the thought of someone liking and trusting her father.

 

Baze himself was a fount of useful information. He turned out to have travelled very widely in his younger days, venturing further south than Ancelstierre’s southernmost coast and west to lands Jyn had only just heard of in her geography lessons. He also knew the Kingdom like the back of his hand and had an opinion on every stone. Not much of it met with more than grudging approval, however fiercely he clearly loved his country.

 

Jyn invited him to dinner, clumsy over the etiquette, wondering how Miss Prionte’s lessons fit in here and caring in a way she hadn’t at Abhorsen’s House, where she was at home and in a position of strength. She’d seen the disdain of Lord Vaspar and Chancellor Pamlo; she didn’t want to give people like them more reasons to treat her dismissively, and wasn’t yet confident enough in the terrain to tell them all to get lost. She didn’t know what she needed from this place: only that it was her home, whether she liked it or not, and that she had a duty to it she couldn’t escape. 

 

At least she was among family. Chirrut had invited himself around and Jyn had included him in dinner, and watched him amuse Bodhi into the first easy smiles she had seen from the Wallmaker, and listened to his stories of the Kingdom. He, too, knew it well, though he had passed most of his time out in the world as a professional seer, and had moved largely in scholarly and governmental circles. He could tell Jyn the basics of the lore of Charter blood she had missed out on, living in Ancelstierre, and it was he who confirmed that when the Clayr said  _ cousins _ they weren’t joking or stretching a point. There were Abhorsen-dark Daughters, and seer blood in Jyn’s family tree, and a real history of mutual support and protection: a tight bond between the two bloodlines whose gifts weighed on them the heaviest.

 

Jyn, who had had only Saw and her father for family since she was a little girl, couldn’t resist the warm glow that being called  _ cousin _ by someone who meant it gave her.

 

Chirrut could also tell her about the Abhorsen-relevant collections she had missed out on seeing. Jyn felt a real interest that almost surprised her in the stores of knowledge that Chirrut sketched out loosely, all those tools and all that information that she had hardly even glimpsed when reading the  _ Book of the Dead _ . The  _ Book _ , though definitive, wasn’t comprehensive. There was so much more that Jyn could know and learn - and even a few of those Daughters of the Clayr with an Abhorsen twist to their blood who could advise her on her learning. Jyn had always liked to learn, though very little of what she had learned in school engaged her. Saw had found her an eager and interested student, and so did Chirrut.

 

Bodhi, stumped by some of what they were talking about and revolted by the rest, fell to talking with Baze about the practicalities of travel and the difficulty of learning to pilot a Paperwing.

 

It was Baze who excused both Clayr, relatively early in the evening, reminding Jyn and Bodhi that they had a long journey ahead of them the following day. Jyn jumped almost guiltily, shocked to find herself spending whole hours at ease even with the threat of the Regency hanging over her father and the sting of the morning’s meeting still live in her mind. She was still off-balance when Baze lingered after Chirrut, and asked to speak to her.

 

Jyn agreed, puzzled, and Bodhi wandered off to the floor-to-ceiling window on the other side of the room and stared out into the darkness. Mogget, who had been sleeping on his blue velvet cushion, stirred and mrowled in his sleep, twisting onto his back. Baze looked a little shifty and uncomfortable.

 

“I know you don’t like Captain Andor,” he said.

 

Jyn’s jaw dropped. “He’s a pain in my arse,” she said, when she’d managed to stick her bottom teeth back to the top ones. “Why?”

 

“I’ve Seen the two of you,” Baze said, as if the words were being extracted from him forcibly, possibly with pliers. “Years ago. I didn’t know when the visions were, but now I’ve seen you both, I know it was you. You now, not in a few years’ time. You argued with him on the plateau near the Wall, didn’t you?”

 

Jyn, dumbstruck, nodded.

 

“He may - he will - he might be there in Belisaere,” Baze said, with far less of his usual crusty assurance than normal. He sounded like he was trying to explain something that was not only difficult to express in words, but personally irritating. “And I saw the two of you surrounded by bright light. Later, I think. Probably later.”

 

“He’s a - he’s a  _ toerag _ ,”  Jyn said, struggling with her extensive vocabulary to find words that expressed her contempt. “Do I have to - what, take him with me? Because of these visions?”

 

Baze shrugged. “It would be a good idea. He’s a useful man in a fight.” He hesitated again. “He’s trustworthy.”

 

“He’s throwing my father under the bus,” Jyn said, confident that Baze would know what she meant. “He doesn’t  _ care _ if Draven kills him. He might just as well tell Draven where my father is to make it easier!”

 

“Are you sure?” Baze said. “He has the face of a friend.”

 

“Not with that grease on his hair he doesn’t!”

 

“He was the only person in that room today who had not already decided who to support,” Baze said flatly. “And he chose you.”

 

“He hasn’t said a word to me,” Jyn said, more struck than she wanted to be.

 

“Yet.” Baze turned away. “Think about it.”

 

“Fine,” Jyn said, not as graciously as she could have done. A hot, immediate pang of embarrassment made her ‘Good night’ overly sweet, and then she just shut her mouth before anything else stupid could come out of it. 

 

Baze inclined his head to her and left, and Jyn was left staring into space for a few moments before the heavy door swung shut and she shook herself out of it. She trod over the thick, soft carpet to where Bodhi was still awestruck by the stars, and stood behind him in silence for a few moments.

 

“How long do you think they’ve been married?” Bodhi asked, still staring out at the constellations, squinting slightly.

 

“Who?”

 

“Baze and Chirrut.”

 

Jyn looked at him, startled. “They don’t wear rings.”

 

“Rings? What?”

 

Jyn linked her hands awkwardly behind her back. “In Ancelstierre people wear these… special rings. On a particular finger.”

 

Bodhi looked politely puzzled. “In the Kingdom we wear bracelets, mostly, on the dominant hand. Often leather, or sometimes metal or cloth, usually stamped with the sigils the couple use. But someone who doesn’t find bracelets convenient could wear a necklace, or a tattoo.”

 

Jyn blinked and assimilated this. It was true Chirrut had worn a green leather bracelet stamped in silver under his librarian’s cuff, and Baze had had a tattoo on his right wrist. She hadn’t really noticed it at the time. “I don’t know,” she said at last. She couldn’t remember her parents’ bracelets; couldn’t even remember if her father wore a bracelet. “How long they’ve been married, I mean.”

 

“It’s unusual,” Bodhi said. “For the Clayr. They don’t, as a rule.”

 

“Oh,” Jyn said. “Goodnight, Bodhi. See you tomorrow at dawn.”

 

She went to sleep, and dreamed of sigils and visions and laughing cats, and Cassian Andor’s eyes fixed on her like there was something he didn’t know.

 

***

 

The council room of the Clayr was all but empty. Only three people sat round the polished marble of the table, and the silver stars of the ceiling had turned cold on their meeting. There were no draughts, of course, and the thick walls and heavy curtains effectively muffled any sound from outside.

 

Mon Mothma had come down from her high seat. She stared unseeing across the shine of the table, as if she were a Daughter herself, looking into the future. Her eyes were troubled.

 

“The Council’s decision is made,” observed Cracken, tapping a silver-chased pen on the table.

 

Mon Mothma said nothing.

 

“In terms of actual facts,” Cracken said, “the Abhorsen-in-Waiting has added very little to our knowledge. And what she has added doesn’t prove the Abhorsen’s innocence. So he knew what the weapon was and how to defeat it, and he told none of us?”

 

Mon Mothma raised her eyes, and met Draven’s. Draven was equally silent.

 

“Orson Krennic was once his best friend,” Mon Mothma said. “Galen is - was - a private man. It is unsurprising that he might have chosen to strike in person, by himself, to reward such a betrayal.”

 

Cracken fidgeted restlessly with the pen. “He may have tried and been killed, based on what we’ve heard from Belisaere. If the rumours that the Wallmakers’ base has been emptied are true - it would be easy to smuggle a body out or dump one in the sewers.”

 

“The Abhorsen-in-Waiting would know if that were the case, and she insists otherwise.” Mon Mothma folded her hands. “Those rumours are unverified, or I would have shared them with her.”

 

Cracken fell silent.

 

“The Council’s decision was taken on the evidence,” Draven said at last. “You are the Regent. You can countermand it if you wish.”

 

Mon Mothma stared at him for a long, unblinking moment. The air felt thin and cold, though the Glacier was kept well-insulated from its mountain conditions.

 

“I will not,” Mon Mothma said finally. 

 

Draven nodded. Cracken sat back in his seat.

 

“I wonder,” Mon Mothma added almost casually, “if you would listen if I did.”

 

“I serve at the Regent’s pleasure,” Draven said mildly.

 

“You serve at the Kingdom’s pleasure,” Mon Mothma said. “As do we all. And you interpret that in your own way, Draven.” Her eyes rose to the stars. “As do we all.”

 

Under the table, Cracken flexed his fingers uneasily.

 

***

 

It was cool and dark and quiescent in the Paperwing hangar. The pre-dawn stillness filled the air with silence, but Jyn still felt something - a peculiar sense of wakefulness that she hadn’t sensed elsewhere in the Glacier.

 

“They’re awake,” Bodhi said softly, nodding at the Paperwings. The Clayr had rows on rows of them, at least twenty; the soft emergency lights that were waking as Jyn and her companions moved shone off the silver edging of their paint, and the lacquer that coated their frames. Some were covered in tarps, and others ready to go, only awaiting the opening of the great doors.     
  


Jyn and Bodhi’s Paperwing was near the front. They had prepared it the previous day, and Bodhi had gone over it with careful, anxious hands in case of sabotage. He had found nothing then, and Jyn confidently expected that he would find nothing now. Draven would have to be a fool to interfere with a craft under the supervision of the Paperwing Flight; they were all excellent Charter mages, a little fey, and seemed to claim themselves as part of their Paperwings. An injury to a Paperwing would be rewarded with a ferocious response. 

 

Two of the pilots hurried alongside Jyn and Bodhi now, ready to open up the hangar and help Jyn and Bodhi on their way. Hera, head of the Flight, had assured them it was no trouble; she sent out dawn patrols every morning, and the two assigned to watch the skies this morning might as well make themselves useful while they could.

 

Ahead of them, a pair of darker shapes moved. As Jyn and Bodhi came closer, and more of the lights woke, those shapes resolved itself into Captain Andor and Kay, waiting beside the Paperwing that they had flown here from Abhorsen’s House. Captain Andor was clearly watching their approach, while Kay made an elaborate show of uninterest.

 

“What’s he doing here?” Bodhi said, less accusatory than curious. Jyn said nothing, thinking of Baze’s strange behaviour from the evening before. The vision alone she might have discounted, the Clayr could be wrong, but Baze had been insistent. And what she was seeing now seemed to bear out his words in the most unexpected way.

 

Jyn dropped her pack into their Paperwing, and met Captain Andor halfway. She folded her arms and waited for him to say something.

 

“They were never going to believe you,” Captain Andor said. There was something new in his eyes when he looked at her, and he was no longer dressed in uniform.

 

Jyn threw her hands up. “Thanks a bloody lot.”

 

“But I do,” Captain Andor said. “I believe you.” 

 

Jyn stopped her jaw from dropping with a Herculean effort.

 

Captain Andor smiled faintly, his eyes resting on her face. “Everything I have done - and I have done some terrible things - I did for the Kingdom. I couldn’t forgive myself if I made a different choice now, for the sake of nothing but illegal orders.” Captain Andor shifted his weight. “I don’t have the Sight, but this path lies clear. Kay and I will go with you and Bodhi if you’ll accept our help.” He paused, and laid a slight emphasis on his next words. “Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”

 

Jyn felt a slow, disbelieving smile spread across her face, and some of the iron go out of her posture. She tilted her head slightly, and examined a face that had somehow rearranged itself in a very different light to the one she was accustomed to seeing it in.

 

_ He was the only person in that room today who had not already decided who to support. And he chose you. _

 

“I say we take them,” Bodhi announced, when the silence stretched too long. “I don’t see him stabbing either of us in the back. And they’re good at what they do.”

 

“Thank you,” Kay said snippily.

 

Jyn stuck out her hand to shake. “Jyn,” she said. “My friends call me Jyn.” She realised too late that a handshake was an Ancelstierran gesture, and started to pull her hand back; but before she could do so Cassian had caught her palm with his and grasped it firmly.

 

“Cassian,” he said.

 

“I’ll take it as read Draven doesn’t know you’re here.”

 

“No,” Cassian said. “And if we leave before he realises, he can’t order me not to go with you.”

 

The Paperwing pilots hauled open the doors. Outside, the pinks and oranges of dawn bled into the lightening charcoal sky.

 

“Beautiful weather for flying,” Cassian said. “And it’s not as far as you think to Belisaere.”


	12. Chapter 12

If you asked Jyn, it was quite far enough to Belisaere. By the time they reached the palace, and Bodhi brought the Paperwing whistling down into a flat, open courtyard in the full sunshine spilling over the grounds, it must have been high noon. Jyn was bored and nervous, and if she twitched too much or tapped her feet Bodhi asked her politely to stop. There was strain in his voice too - not, he said, from the flying. Jyn thought about their plan and couldn’t blame him. It was dangerous and it required him to face the Wallmakers he had fled: his only remaining family, in league with necromancers.

 

Mogget slept most of the way, only rousing as the pale towers of Belisaere and its aqueducts came into view; Jyn only wished he had slept longer. He crawled out of his hiding place and sat on her lap, lecturing her about the history of Belisaere and clawing her whenever he thought she wasn’t paying enough attention. Between the discomfort of sitting still for six hours in full armour and nerves about the upcoming assault, she was in no mood for a geography lesson, and listened irritably as he pontificated.

 

The palace was beautiful, she conceded, but it was an anxious beauty: gilt over poorly-laid plaster, dazzling the eye to distract it from the palpable air of nervousness. This was a city where the centre of power was shifting, and had not come to rest; that accounted for the lack of people in the streets as they flew over. Nobody shot at the Paperwings as they came in to land, but guards came hurrying over to the courtyard, and Jyn tipped up her nose and stared at them as Miss Prionte had once taught her to.

 

“This is an interesting welcome for the Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” she said coolly.

 

“The Abhorsen-in-Wai -” began a sergeant of the guard, and then gave back a step when he saw Mogget. Jyn squashed her own disconcerted glance; the sergeant looked distinctly daunted. It was obvious he recognised Mogget, from the time Mogget had kept company with Galen Erso, and wished he wasn’t seeing him now. Jyn wondered what Mogget had done. Stolen a fish? Set something on fire?

  
Turned someone into a toad?

 

“Yes, the Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” Mogget said helpfully.

 

The sergeant bowed deeply. “I apologise, my lady, we weren’t told to expect you. And you have brought, uh, companions.”

 

“Exactly,” Jyn said. It was not difficult to make herself sound as if she suspected the sergeant of being a little slow, though what she actually suspected him of was being a lot frightened. “This is a brief visit only. I have urgent business in the city. Two of my companions will remain here; please see to it that they are not molested.”

 

The sergeant saluted, called his men together, and hurried out of the courtyard. 

 

“We have a few hours, I think,” Cassian said, joining Bodhi and Jyn. “Krennic isn’t in the city and he’s given no orders for what to do with you, or we’d have met a different welcome.”   
  


“Galen always pretended Jyn was insignificant,” Bodhi said, smoothing a light hand over the Paperwing’s fuselage. Jyn didn’t listen to the way his voice shook; it hurt too much. 

 

Cassian’s eyes cut sideways and caught her own. “No wonder he sent you to Ancelstierre,” he said. “He could never have got away with that if you were in the country. You make too much noise.”

  
  
Jyn snorted at him, disconcerted herself, and felt a strange warmth around her ears. Mogget let out an irritable sigh.

 

“Mogget is right,” Kay announced. “If you two are quite finished, we should proceed, before that sergeant finds someone to give him other orders. I still think -”

 

“No, Kay,” Cassian said. “You are staying here. I’m not risking you in a building full of warped Wallmakers.”   
  


“I could rip their arms off before they unravelled me,” Kay complained, “and last time I got slightly unravelled -”   
  


“We’re counting on you, Kay,” Jyn said. “If you and Mogget don’t defend these Paperwings there’ll be no way for us to get out of the city, and all of this will have been for nothing.”

 

Mogget curled up on top of Jyn’s pack and went to sleep. Jyn rolled her eyes.

 

 

It was lucky Cassian knew the palace and the city; Jyn conceded tentatively to herself that it probably wasn’t a bad idea to have brought him along. Bodhi was too full of nerves to have passed muster in the palace, and Jyn would have had to bluster and threaten her way into status enough to get them both out in one piece, where Cassian merely walked with confidence and was left in peace. He had not dressed in his Regency livery, but in plain, good clothes that made him look like the son of a middling-prosperous merchant, or some practical clerk of the court, and which concealed a surprising amount of weaponry. It suited him better than olive wool and grease, and Jyn wondered if this was what he was really accustomed to, under all the playacting and derring-do. He was still playing a part of some kind - an assistant and a guide to the young Abhorsen-in-Waiting, ushering her through the palace with businesslike speed - but when they left the palace by a postern wall and Jyn commented that he knew Belisaere well, Cassian unbent far enough to say that Lord Bail had often brought him here. Maybe this was the work for which he’d been raised, in a sense.

 

He was nervous under the veneer of professional calm. Jyn felt her shoulders bracing into her armour in response, her face hardening in response to the fleeting looks and signs against misfortune she saw among the cityfolk. More than one saw her surcoat, registered her bells, and very clearly turned around and went straight home. 

 

“Are they afraid of me?” Jyn said to Bodhi, who was keeping up with an obvious hurried skip to his step.

 

“No,” Bodhi said.

“Yes,” Cassian said.

 

Jyn spared them both a look of pure irritation.

 

“They’re more scared of whatever it is you’re protecting them from than they are of you, but they’re still scared of you,” Bodhi elaborated, and then said “left here, there’s a shortcut round the back, to the tradesmen’s entrance.”

 

Bodhi darted into a sidestreet and they swept after him. It was well-kept, no disused alley, with small painted doors that Cassian said probably gave onto servants’ wings or walled courtyards. Still, there was no-one else in it. Cassian loosened his sword in its scabbard and Jyn ran her hands over her bells; their handles felt live.

 

“Not far,” Bodhi said, just ahead of them. He carried only a short dagger, and protected himself only with vambraces hidden under his sleeves and a sturdy gethre-plated jerkin under a respectable woollen sleeveless jacket, but Jyn could see the fingers of his right hand flickering in restless spell-casting movements, golden flashes twisting between the fingertips.

 

Jyn looked at Cassian, and caught up to Bodhi. As if they’d planned it, Cassian came up on his other side, ready to act if something ambushed them.

  
  
Ready to kill, Jyn thought, and was less disturbed by that than she might have expected. 

 

Bodhi led them briefly across a quiet street hung with empty lanterns, and then into another highly salubrious alley, this one broad enough to take a cart, if the driver were canny. He stopped before a broad wooden gate, plain, serviceable, barred with iron and heavily spelled, and nodded.

 

“Here,” he said, very softly. “There should be a guard post, just the other side.” Bodhi swallowed. “They’ll probably have been warned about me - I’ve been gone too long. Krennic gets… suspicious, when people go away. And I… took things with me, that someone who was coming back wouldn’t have taken.”

 

Cassian drew his sword quietly. Jyn ran her hand over the bells, and then drew her sword in her left hand. Saw had taught her to fence with both, knowing that one day she would wield the bells, and Jyn was more confident using bells in her right hand.

 

Bodhi turned back to the gate, a spell prepared in one hand. He touched his Charter mark with the other, then laid his palm on the wood. It shimmered, and a metal bolt audibly unlocked, the gates pushing inwards, opening onto a courtyard clearly meant for loading and unloading.

 

It was empty. Jyn could see where the guard post was supposed to be, but there was no-one there, and the courtyard had the still feel of an undisturbed room. 

 

A breeze whipped idly around the six chimneys far above them, and tugged at Bodhi’s braided hair. Jyn tasted metal on her tongue, and Cassian stiffened. 

 

_ Jyn, listen to me. I love you. I need you to run. _

 

Jyn repressed a shudder, and looked up at the building that towered above them. Four storeys high, with windows taller than Jyn’s father, heavy shutters, and the outlets of a complicated ventilation system visible, Mogget had described it as a mercantile centre of power that had grown out of a straightforward townhouse centuries ago. It was a nerve cluster for Belisaere’s modern guilds, with deep cellars, volumes that the librarians of the University couldn’t dream of possessing, and extensive collections, never catalogued by anyone other than a Wallmaker. Their Charter blood had preserved them from scrutiny. Krennic had turned their power on the Regency.

 

There could be anything in here, but “anything” began with Jyn’s father. Up above, a window swung on its hinges in the breeze, and a broken pane caught the light: if it had broken when the window slammed into the frame, then the window had been left unattended for far longer than it would have been if the building had been occupied normally. Jyn nudged Cassian and jerked her chin at it. He nodded; he’d seen it too.

 

The gates began to swing shut. Bodhi waved an absent hand at them and they stayed open.

 

“Bodhi,” Cassian said slowly, “is it possible that the Wallmakers keep Free Magic beings here?”   
  


“Oh, yes,” Bodhi said. “Definitely. There’s a river that runs beneath our feet, one of the deep cellars reaches it, and there are some beings that have been kept there for… a long time. In stoppered bottles.” Bodhi licked his lips. “Galen used to check on them. They’re carefully guarded, or… they were. I don’t actually. You know, I haven’t seen anyone from the Belisaere consulate for months.”

 

“Were you taught how to deal with them?” Jyn said, fighting back memories - slinking blue flame and whispering mist, loose rock beneath her feet. 

 

“Yes,” Bodhi said. He swallowed and walked forward. Jyn grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

 

“Let me go first,” she said. 

  
  


The consulate was empty on the inside, too. It looked as if it had been emptied, rather than abandoned; there were no Charter lamps remaining, and the windows onto the street had been shuttered, the better to hide that all small moveables had been taken, from lockboxes to tools to laboratory supplies: the library was completely void of anything resembling a book or an artefact. They had not had any malicious intent, but they’d also clearly not expected to return soon. Furniture had been covered in heavy cloth drapes, the better to protect it. The kitchen hearth had been raked out. A fine layer of dust lay over desks and workbenches, and the cabinets carried nothing but air. 

 

Jyn sensed no Dead. Cassian said he heard nothing. Bodhi looked increasingly troubled, and checked particular rooms with special care, as if he were hoping for a message or a sign. The only thing out of the ordinary that any of them found was a great splash of soot and burning against one wall in a large study with a mahogany desk that reminded Jyn of the one in Abhorsen’s House, and a dried bloodstain on the thick wool carpet. Someone had tried and failed to scrub both out. The sun streamed in, and motes of dust danced in its beams. Jyn looked out the tall windows, and realised she was looking directly up at the palace.

 

“This was Krennic’s office,” Bodhi said. “Galen gave him the desk, a long time ago.” He coughed nervously. “Did - I mean, the blood -”

 

“Nobody died here,” Jyn said. She closed her eyes briefly. “My father is still not dead. But I don’t think he’s here, either.”

 

Cassian fingered a long score on the mahogany table. “Not for lack of trying, I think,” he said. “And can you taste the Free Magic?”

 

Both Bodhi and Jyn nodded.

 

“Assume the Abhorsen came here to confront Krennic,” Cassian said softly, resting his free hand on the table. “Assume the Wallmakers did not realise the Abhorsen knew.”   
  


“Galen could be subtle, sometimes,” Bodhi corroborated, with a quick glance at Jyn. 

 

“They brought him to Krennic,” Cassian said slowly. “The Abhorsen attacked Krennic. The blood is presumably either Krennic’s or an accomplice’s. The Abhorsen didn’t use his bells, for whatever reason. If Krennic was unarmed, and they were equally matched as Charter mages, then the best way to secure an advantage over the Abhorsen would be using one of those Free Magic creatures in a bottle.”

 

The Wallmaker's study walls were lined with glass-fronted cabinets. The only things in the entire room that weren’t transparent were the desk drawers. Jyn began to open them, one after the other. The last one rattled as she opened it, and the only small moveable item they’d found in the entire building rolled forward: a heavy green glass bottle, with a silver-bound stopper loose next to it.

 

Bodhi caught his breath at the sound. Cassian swore.

 

The scent of Free Magic was thick on Jyn’s tongue. She heard the faint crackling of white fire and the slightest movement not so far away, and knew that neither came from her memories.

 

_ Jyn, listen to me. I love you. I need you to run. _

 

“Cassian, open a window,” Jyn said calmly, leaving the drawer open and straightening up. “Bodhi, go out of it. Get back to the palace, pick up the Paperwings, and come and find us here.”

 

Cassian hurried to the window, and started to work it open.   
  


“Kay can’t fly a -”

  
  
“Do you want to bet Mogget can’t? Go.”

 

“I can help -”   
  


“Yes, you can. I’m asking you to.” Jyn came out from behind the desk, and put herself between Bodhi and the door. Cassian came to join her. His sword was in his right hand, a spell in his left, and he chose to stand on her right, shielding her weaponless hand. Jyn’s right hovered over her bells.

 

“Trust the Charter,” Jyn said.

 

Behind her, Bodhi swore fluently and scrambled out of the window, dropping the short distance onto the tiled roof of the corridor that surrounded the courtyard. Dimly, as if underwater, Jyn heard the rattling sound of his escape. Far closer were the sounds of hissing footsteps.

 

“I just hope it’s not Hish,” Jyn said, taking a firmer grip on her sword. “I fucking hate Hish.”

 

The door swung open. A twinned pair of Hish slunk through it. Hish didn’t speak, but they could laugh, and these did. The sound echoed in Jyn’s memories as well as her ears.

 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jyn breathed.

 

Rough-edged with fear and adrenaline, Cassian very nearly laughed.


	13. Chapter 13

Afterwards Jyn never remembered much of the battle, and neither did Cassian, his pin-sharp observation skills defeated by the phosphorus flame of the Hish and their burning claws. Jyn killed one in the study itself while Cassian trapped another in a net of golden Charter links, but the two were somehow tied together and even as the first Hish writhed and died under Jyn’s cold sword, howling at a pitch Jyn could barely hear, the second wailed, blasted free from its confinement and blew Cassian across the room. It leaped over to tear at him, and Cassian had to roll away and scramble to his feet without his sword, a fruitless spell falling from his lips and granting him enough grace to get down a single flight of stairs while Jyn seized his sword and bolted after them, slashing wildly at the Hish, who turned on her.  Jyn threw Cassian’s sword over its shoulder and called the words of a spell Saw had taught her that broke on its blue-white hide like water on Saw’s old khaki mac.

 

The fight rolled down the great stairs and through the principal receiving rooms of the Wallmakers, setting fires in accountancy offices that burned with the Charter or Free Magic or both. Cassian lost a chunk of his hair in flame, and the gethre plates of Jyn’s left arm were blackened; Cassian’s spell-casting grew visibly more tired, and his sword work became more brilliant and reckless, as if to compensate. Jyn tried her bells on the maddened Hish, and found only that Ranna made Cassian stagger and his eyelids droop. She silenced the bell before it could call again and tried for a net-spell that held the Hish long enough for Cassian to grow alert again, and then they were fighting once more.

 

There was a whispering in Jyn’s mind throughout - the voice she suspected the Hish could not use aloud. It spoke to her of glories and victories and power beyond price, and when she wouldn’t listen, it told her how her mother had died, and Jyn fought to block it out, not to miss key blows or let down her guard. But it was hard, so hard, and if the sword her father made for her hadn’t seemed to live in her hand like the perfect extension of her arm, Jyn felt she would have faltered and been killed.

 

The Hish backhanded a blow that caught Cassian offguard and sent him sprawling onto the marble floor of the entry hall, and the Hish shrieked with delight and tried to pounce.

 

A spell Jyn had never consciously known flashed into her mind, the  _ Book of the Dead _ falling open to pages she didn’t know before her. Jyn howled a spell that scorched with equal parts white fire and golden, that poured from her mouth in one burning stream and left her gasping and blinking tears from her eyes. She staggered, panicked, and seized the banister for balance as Free Magic and Charter spun the Hish’s mist and crackling fire into a ball of screaming that made her vision go white - and then there was only silence, dust, and a strong smell of smoke.

 

Cassian scrambled to his feet and stared at the place where the Hish had been.

 

Jyn hacked a cough. Her throat felt like sandpaper and she seemed to have scorched every tastebud on her tongue.

 

“Ouch,” she said weakly. The sound of running made Cassian spin on his heel and Jyn grasp panickily at her sword, but when the enormous front doors opened the only thing behind them was Bodhi, dagger drawn and two Paperwings landed on the street behind him.

 

“You were absolutely right,” Bodhi said. “Mogget can fly a Paperwing.”   


  
“Excellent,” Cassian said, turning Bodhi firmly round with both hands on his shoulders. He sounded flat and sarcastic, but Jyn thought he was actually tired and frightened. “Fantastic. Delighted to hear it. Now let’s leave before anything else tries to kill or arrest us.”

 

“About that,” Bodhi said. “Someone did try to arrest me. That sergeant from before. Mogget bit him.”   


  
“Never mind,” Jyn croaked, hobbling down the last of the stairs as fast as she could. “Bodhi, fly Cassian, he’s too tired.”

 

“You just burned your mouth off with a spell I don’t think anyone who wasn’t an Abhorsen could use,” Cassian pointed out.

  
“Mogget can fly me. It’ll be fine.” Jyn reached the first Paperwing - the one with Kay in - and tried to climb in. Mogget was sitting on the Paperwing’s nose, watching her.

 

“What’s wrong with Cassian?” Kay demanded.

 

“Too tired. Paperwing can’t fit Bodhi, Cassian and you.” Jyn tried to heave herself up the last few inches, but was struggling: Bodhi had already shoved and pushed Cassian into the back seat of the other Paperwing, and now showed worrying signs of coming to get her. The street was totally quiet, all the houses and shops shuttered with no signs of life, but Jyn could hear a large group of people approaching with purpose. Guards.

 

“Oh, for shit’s sake,” she hissed, and tried again. Suddenly, Kay’s enormous, half-spell hands appeared in her field of vision, and she was being very unceremoniously hauled into the bucket seat at the front. Mogget leaped into her lap, all claws and fluffy tail in her face.

 

“Thank you, Kay,” Jyn said, very surprised.

  
“My calculations are that Cassian’s chances of surviving that encounter without your assistance were minimal. Whatever it was you encountered.”   
  


“Uh, a couple of Hish,” Jyn said, pushing Mogget’s tail out of the way and squinting at the mirror.

 

“I take it the Abhorsen wasn’t there,” Mogget said, settling down in her lap.

 

“No,” Jyn said, and gritted her teeth against that knowledge. “We fly south.”

 

As the guards rounded the corner, she forced the first notes from her lips, and the Paperwing lifted into the air, wobbly but fierce. Jyn willed it up into the clouds, out of reach of a few half-hearted arrows, and fought not to grow dizzy as it climbed abruptly. She heard Bodhi whistling, much clearer and brighter than her own notes, and the other Paperwing lifted into the air in her field of vision. She craned her neck to see Cassian, who waved faintly when he saw she was looking at him.

 

The sky was blue and fierce, but there were clouds gathering further south. Jyn called up a wind to blow them along the line of the shore, settled back in her seat, and closed her eyes.

 

“This is an unfortunate time to take a nap,” Mogget complained.

  
“You can fly a bit for a change,” Jyn said. “I just killed the Hish that killed my mother.”   


  
There was a sudden silence.

  
“How do you know that?” Mogget said.

  
“They told me so,” Jyn said. “And they might have been lying, but I remember them. They were… just the same.”

 

Mogget flexed his paws in Jyn’s lap. “It could have been.” He said nothing else for a while, and Jyn peered at the horizon with bleary eyes.

 

“She was brave,” he said finally. “Brave and very fierce. Few mages could have held off a single Hish, let alone two, and by the time they caught up with her, Lyra must have been exhausted. She made an impressive last stand. They were significantly weakened, and fled when the Abhorsen and I arrived. He elected to try to save your mother, and to try to find you, instead of following them. If Krennic has kept them all this time, they will have been old and strong.”

 

The medallion Lyra had looped around Jyn’s neck ten years ago slid beneath the fabric of her shirt. It was probably slick with sweat, but it was warm and familiar, and its weight on Jyn’s breastbone was reassuring.

 

“He kept them,” she mumbled, forcing her eyes open. When had they flickered shut? “The sick bastard. Cassian thinks he used them to restrain my father for a while. I hate him.”

 

“Cassian?” Kay enquired.

  
“No. Krennic.” Jyn sighed. “I don’t hate Cassian. But I killed them. I killed them both. Couldn’t have done it without Cassian, but I got them in the end.” Her voice was hoarse and low; it sounded like her mother’s.

  
_ Trust the Charter. And run.  Just run! _

 

“Rest, Abhorsen-in-Waiting,” Mogget said. “I won’t let the Paperwing fall out of the sky.” He paused. “But you owe me a fish.”   
  


“Done,” Jyn mumbled, and sank directly into sleep.   
  
  


 

The Street of the Wallmakers was still smoking from Cassian and Jyn’s hurried exit when the bloody hands of the Regency assembled: Charter mages and saboteurs, fighters and guards, drawn to this place by the orders sent south only hours ago. Some of them would have known Cassian Andor to talk to, but Draven hadn’t yet discovered Cassian’s absence when the messenger hawk had been sent, and none of them knew Cassian well enough - or was sufficiently learned - to recognise the signature of his preferred spells and means of casting. There was nothing left but faint smoke curling from outburst shutters and a persistent tang of metal, not yet worn away by the cleansing fire of the Charter. And the few neighbours who had persisted in the face of Orson Krennic - or had been too frightened to leave - had been driven from their homes by the sound of an actual pitched battle, and the sight of the Abhorsen’s keys. No-one was hanging around to explain to the Regency men what had happened.

 

“I don’t like this silence,” said Melshi, who usually worked as an alchemist three streets over, and who was currently crouched on a roof, hidden from the street by its steep crosstree. “What in the name of the Five happened here?”

 

“You don’t have to like it,” Tonc said, crouched behind him. “You just have to light the place up.” 

 

“Where are the Guard? You’re going to have to talk fast to get us out of Krennic’s clutches if those bastards come along.”

 

“We don’t interfere with the Wallmakers’ consulate, no matter what. Orders.” Tonc snorted humourlessly. “Bribes. Either way, no-one will come.” He poked Melshi in the kidney. “Get on with it. And stop calling me a bastard, my mothers were as legally wed as the next loving couple.”

 

“You just be ready.” 

 

The city bells rang the fourth hour after noon, halfway to sunset, and Melshi ran forward and made the short leap onto the consulate roof, joined by two others. Together they dropped packages down the six broad chimneys of the consulate, and then hurried back to their places. Tonc was already making his way rapidly off the roof and into the attic they’d come from when Melshi got his feet off Wallmaker territory, and Melshi felt a chill go down his spine.

 

“Did you already light the charge?”

 

“No,” Tonc said. “I can do it as well from here. Ready to run?”

 

Melshi glanced out of the attic window. Across the street he saw a faint flicker of movement, a bowman with spelled arrows to the string, and set his jaw. “Wouldn’t want to be in the clean-up crew.”

 

“I don’t want to be cleaned up.” Tonc picked up chalk, and took it to the blank surface of the attic wall, drawing with smooth, confident strokes, and speaking a word that rasped audibly at his throat and made him stagger.

 

“Time to go,” he croaked, and both he and Melshi ran like there was a Stilken at their heels. 

 

They had only just reached the cellars, and were fleeing through the hidden passageways, when there was a dull boom and the city shook around them. Melshi was flung off his feet; Tonc fell into a wall. But they both got up and ran on, and far above, true flames licked at the tainted fabric of the Wallmakers’ Belisaere haunt, engulfing the soot from Jyn and Cassian’s spells, erasing their footsteps in the dust.

 

“Do you think it’ll be enough?” Melshi panted, neck and neck with Tonc.

 

“Course,” Tonc gasped, voice still sandpapery, projecting a confidence he clearly didn’t feel. “Krennic’s not the Emperor.”

 

“I bet he wasn’t even there,” Melshi complained.

 

“Then we’ll blow up his next little hideout,” Tonc said irritably, diving out of a cellar door behind a tavern counter and slipping into the back room. “And the next.”

 

“Not if he gets to us first,” Melshi said grimly.

 

Tonc had nothing to say to that.


	14. Chapter 14

Mogget flew, and Jyn slept, for hours, uninterrupted. When Jyn eventually woke it was to the sound of gathering raindrops - none of which seemed to touch her in the safe canopy of the Paperwing - and the wholly unwelcome sensation of Mogget batting her cheek very lightly with all his claws out. Jyn cursed at him.

 

“Saw Gerrera was a terrible influence on you,” Mogget observed. “I told your father so.”

 

Jyn was abruptly wide awake. “You know Saw?”

 

Mogget flicked his tail and declined to answer. “At least you’re awake. Time to get some work done; this Paperwing needs to land. We’re heading into a storm and it’s getting dark.”

 

Jyn peered over the side. The land was a lump below them; the sea, crinkled cloth. “Any suggestions where?”

 

“Not the foggiest,” Mogget said calmly. “Make sure it’s defensible. You’ve been tracked by Gore Crows and attacked by Free Magic creatures with a special interest in killing you personally; it would be a shame if you were to be caught out now.”

 

“You wouldn’t let that happen,” Jyn said, wondering if the dark grey square down below was an abandoned farmhouse, or a trick of the light.

 

Mogget snorted. “Why? Because I serve Abhorsen?”

 

There was a nasty twist to his voice. Jyn deliberately ignored it.

 

“Because you’d be bored without your source of free entertainment, that’s why.”

 

Mogget went silent, like he was surprised. Jyn pursed her lips and whistled to circle them lower, and then, forty feet in the air, hastily whistled another note that would carry them on. The dark square was indeed an abandoned farmhouse, but it was abandoned because the nearby Charter Stone was broken, spilling sickness into the world around it. As well advertise their presence to every Dead thing for miles around, when neither Cassian nor Jyn was fighting fit.

 

“Sensible,” Mogget remarked. “But we can't stay in the air forever, Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”

 

“You mentioned,” Jyn muttered.

 

In the end she chose a broad beach, well-hidden from a little-travelled section of the coast road by steep cliffs, and offering further security in the form of a shallow stream which meandered  down to the sea. She had actually been thinking of hiding the Paperwings above the high-tide mark, relatively sheltered from the wind, and making camp next to them, but was pleased to discover on landing that there was a cave nearby, dry, clean and free of anything hostile; she asked Kay to check on Cassian, since he was clearly itching to do so, and climbed out of the Paperwing to move her gear into the cave and cover the Paperwing with a tarp. 

 

Mogget followed her into the mouth of the cave and sat there, looking judgemental, while Jyn shucked off her gethre armour and surcoat. She shivered unexpectedly at the loss of the extra layers and the weight, then glanced out of the cave’s mouth at the sky and stripped down a few more layers, dumping them in a pile next to the surcoat. Next to that, she laid her bells and - after a second’s thought - a blanket.

 

“Will you keep an eye on my bells?” she asked Mogget. 

 

“Certainly,” Mogget said. “If only because you’re stupid enough to take them off. But what are you doing?”

 

“Going fishing,” Jyn said, digging through her pack until she found the small wooden box Saw had carved her when she was thirteen, with its reel of fishing line and small selection of flies. All of the hooks as well as the flies and weights were clearly somehow handmade; they had not rusted or disintegrated. But then, of course, Saw had always known she would go home. “Saw taught me how.”

 

“It’s getting on to rain,” Mogget pointed out. 

 

“I promised you a fish,” Jyn said, stuffing everything else back into her pack. “And that’s something I can fix, unlike everything else in this bloody country.”

 

There was a sudden silence, and Jyn realised only then that Cassian, Bodhi and Kay had reached the cave. Cassian looked significantly brighter than earlier, and he and Kay were both carrying armfuls of driftwood and dry seaweed. Jyn checked her knife in her belt and helped herself to a likely-looking stick.

 

“If I can’t get a bite,” she said, carefully looking only at Mogget, “it’ll be clams. Clams are nice.”

 

“Hmm,” Mogget said, and curled up on top of the bells and blanket.

 

It was already spitting as Jyn stepped out of the cave’s shelter, the first darts of rain falling from a lowering grey sky. The sand crunched under her feet, reassuringly real, and Jyn made her way down to the shoreline. She found a likely place to cast a line, sat on a rock, and waited.

 

She’d never been patient as a child. Saw and her father had taught her how to wait, but where Saw’s methods of teaching produced dinner, or a new skill, her father’s seemed to have produced little more than ignorance. She pushed that bitter thought aside, and tried to think instead about those unhurried days by the water with Saw, before his movements became difficult enough for her to worry, and the pauses halfway up the hill near Saw’s favourite fishing spot (controlled by the Ancelstierran navy, and officially totally off-limits) became less about appreciating the view and more about letting Saw breathe. The last few years they’d spent more time sitting on the bench by the old naval cemetery two-thirds of the way up the hill, stuffed full of long-dead admirals enjoying a sea view from beyond the grave, than they had climbing.

 

The rain got heavier. Her shirt plastered to her back, and she began to shiver, but she welcomed it. The cold was real and it felt of something; since the Hish had begun to whisper and she had ignored them in order to kill them, she had felt a strange emptiness. Maybe because there would have been no escape if she hadn’t been able to focus long enough to do so.

 

But it felt strange, Jyn thought, that the only things she really knew about Lyra Erso were her Charter mastery, her maps, and - now - the way she had died. Saw had spoken of her sometimes, but not often, and it always seemed to cause him almost physical pain. Even when he hadn’t needed the respirator, and had smoked fewer of the menthol cigarettes the doctors claimed would help, he had repeatedly burst into coughing fits and claimed he was too tired to finish the story. 

 

The Hish had probably lied, Jyn thought, and tilted her face up into the rain. At least it was clean. As an afterthought, she took down her hair and let it spread over her shoulders. Without shampoo it wouldn’t get clean, but it might be a bit cleaner.

 

It took a period of time - Jyn wasn’t sure how long, but long enough for her hair to soak through - for a fish to bite, and Jyn’s attention had gone so lax that she almost lost it. But Saw had taught her well, and her reflexes didn’t fail her; she pulled the fish in, examined it quickly, and then clubbed it, the familiar ghost-cold brush of the fish’s death passing rapidly. It was too small to be a meal for more than Mogget, but it was something.

 

She looked back at the sea-cave, and saw the glow of a fire at the cave’s mouth that made her shiver again with the contrast, and made her feel in a sudden sharp pang that it would be nice to be warm and clean and dry, and that she could have at least two out of three of those things. She rubbed a hand over her mouth and locked down at the fish, then took out her knife and cleaned it quickly, tossing the viscera out to sea. She washed her hands in the water, and realised with a start that the tide had come in significantly, and the light had worsened a great deal. Clams were probably off the menu.

 

Jyn sighed, and tossed the stick into the sea too. It was too wet to burn now.

 

She returned to the cave, and looked around for Mogget. He was asleep on top of the bells now; the blanket had somehow been moved, but nobody looked as if they’d been clawed. Bodhi was asleep, Kay was deep in a book - though Jyn didn’t understand how he could read - and Cassian was doing something with an iron casserole pot and… something. Probably the rations the Clayr had given them. She hoped he hadn’t been counting on clams. 

 

“Mogget?” she said, and the cat’s green eyes flashed open and focussed on the fish she held.

 

“Ah,” he said, licking his lips and sounding almost unconcerned. “Dinner. At least for some of us.”

 

“For you,” Jyn said. “We couldn’t have got out of Belisaere without you. I don’t know if you want me to try to cook it -”

 

“Fresh lishling?” Mogget said, scandalised. He got to his paws, stretched luxuriously, and padded over to Jyn. “No. You would undoubtedly burn it. Or overcook it. Possibly both.”

 

Jyn blinked at him. Her eyelids were heavy. “Can you burn something without overcooking it?”

 

“It’s called searing, and in the hands of a skilled chef, which you are not, it’s a fine method of cuisine.” Mogget leaned up on his back paws, front paws clawing at Jyn’s sodden leggings. 

 

She winced and gave the fish to him. “Well, you’re welcome.”

 

“It’s nice to see an Abhorsen giving me my due,” Mogget said - or Jyn thought that was what he said. He mumbled it from around a mouthful of lishling, his white muzzle already glittering with fish scales.

 

Jyn brushed her hands off on her leggings, and caught Cassian’s eye by accident. He was watching her with a faintly stunned look, something soft and strange in his dark eyes, and whatever it was - Jyn couldn’t put a name to it any more than she had been able to name her feelings while she sat on that rock soaking herself in the rain - it made her blush patchy and reddish.

  
“What?” she said.

 

“Nothing,” Cassian said, equally embarrassed - although Jyn was annoyed to see that he went a uniform and rather flattering dusky pink, rather than lobster-like in places. His voice was strangely rough-edged, though, as if he was still scorched from his spellcasting earlier. “You should change before you freeze.” He averted his eyes. “Is that a necklace you’re wearing?”   
  


Jyn plucked absently at the fabric over her mother’s Charter medallion, and fought back a fresh attack of embarrassment as she realised how transparent the shirt must have become to let Cassian see the medallion. “It was my mother’s.” She cleared her throat. “Could you turn around? And Kay?”   


  
“I can’t see why you should worry about me,” Kay said unhelpfully, without lifting his head from his book. Jyn closed her eyes and tried not to swear.   


  
“Just do it,” Cassian snapped, the first time Jyn had heard him address a cross word to Kay. Kay was obviously equally surprised, but though he grumbled, he did turn around.

 

Bodhi mumbled in his sleep, stirring. Cassian muttered something back, and Bodhi quieted. They must, Jyn thought (in order to avoid thinking about other things) have come to understand each other much better on the Paperwing flight from Belisaere.

 

She changed clothes as quickly as she could, and draped the wet ones over a rock, near the fire. Her outer layers were still dry, though filthy; she put the woollen tunic on to keep herself warm, and settled closer to the fire. 

 

“I’m decent,” she said, awkwardly.

  
“I don’t understand how that is a state that correlates with being dressed,” Kay announced, curmudgeonly as ever. Cassian turned around just in time for Jyn to see him roll his eyes. She bit her lip on a smile, and turned her attention to her wet and tangled hair.

 

The Clayr had given her a comb carved of bone. Jyn was almost afraid to ask where the bone had come from, but it worked well enough on the knots and tangles. By the time she had finished, Cassian had passed her a bowl of some noodle soup, hot and chewy and sustaining with a salty, spiced broth, and Jyn surprised herself with her own hunger.

 

It was very quiet in the cave. Bodhi shifted occasionally in his sleep, and Kay turned pages. Mogget finished with his fish, finished his finicky cleaning operations, and went to sleep, still on top of Jyn’s bells.

 

“The Hish we killed today,” Jyn said slowly. “I’m pretty sure they killed my mother.”

 

Cassian met her eyes, and then lowered his bowl a little, swallowing his mouthful of soup. “Congratulations,” he said, after a few moments.

 

“I’m not sure that’s the word,” Jyn said. She looked down at her own bowl in her lap, and scooped up the dregs. “At least they’re gone.”

 

Cassian nodded.

 

“I used to dream about them,” Jyn said, and didn’t know why she was saying it. “Especially when the wind blew from the north.”

 

Kay looked between her and Cassian, then went back to his book, with all the air of someone who intended never to resurface.

 

“I hope you have other things to remember your mother for,” Cassian said, very low and quiet. He leaned back against the cave wall and stretched his legs out until his feet were almost in the fire. 

 

Jyn stared at the flames. “Honestly, it’s mostly that.” She set her empty bowl aside, and uncrossed her legs, pressing her fingers into stiff muscles that had spent all day tucked into the Paperwing or fighting for her life. Her hair fell down over her face, the two shorter locks dangling in her eyes. “Saw told me some stories, but it’s painful for him, talking about her.”

 

Cassian said nothing, but he was watching her with kindness, and something that might have been recognition. It stung in some strange way - not because it was hurtful, but because she wasn’t used to it. Saw treated her lack of mother and father as a fact of life; her classmates never got close enough to offer her real feelings about it, one way or the other. And she’d known them for a decade - Cassian had been irritating her and saving her life for a week. 

 

Less.

 

“What about your parents?” Jyn asked, grasping at straws to change the subject, or at least deflect that look on Cassian’s face. 

 

She was sorrier than she thought she would be when he looked away. “I don’t remember them. The town I grew up in - Fest; it’s in the north - was ransacked by a necromancer when I was very young.”

 

Jyn caught her breath.

 

“I don’t remember what happened to me,” Cassian said, almost unnaturally calm. “I was six years old - children can forget a lot at that age. Lord Bail and Lady Breha fostered me; they were hoping to find my parents. But my mother and father never came back, so I became their ward.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Jyn said, very quietly.

 

“Don’t be.” Cassian leaned forward and fed another stick of driftwood to the fire; the stick popped as it caught, and everyone jumped except for Mogget and Kay. 

 

“Sssh,” Jyn said to Bodhi, who had rolled onto his back and opened his sleepy eyes wide and frantic. “It’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

 

There was a long and strangely restful silence. The fire spat sparks.

 

“It would have been nice,” Jyn said. “If either of us had had a chance to grow up without… without.”

 

“It would have been nice,” Cassian agreed. “But Saw is a parent to you. I saw how he reacted when you brought him to me for interrogation.”

 

Jyn twitched and thought about complaining, but there was the faintest amused quirk to Cassian’s mouth, and she had to admit that that was exactly what she’d done. She tried to squash her smile, but it sneaked out anyway, and was rewarded by a brief amused flash of white teeth from Cassian before he looked away again.

 

“Lord Bail was… like a father to me.” Cassian fidgeted with the knife he was still carrying at his side; it bore a crest Jyn didn’t recognise, but which she would bet money was the Organas’ crest. The knife itself looked well-loved; she wondered how long he’d had it, and which of the Organas had given it to him. “He and Lady Breha raised me to serve the Kingdom.”

 

Jyn thought of the deaths that had started this all: of two co-regents, strolling in a garden, and a flash of Free Magic from a clear blue sky.

 

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, quietly, awkwardly. “For your loss.”

 

Cassian looked down at his feet. With his face shadowed, Jyn couldn’t see his expression - but even if she had been able to she wouldn’t have known what he was thinking.

 

She leaned forward and held out a hand to him, tentatively. She was about to withdraw it when he touched her fingers lightly with his, and then wrapped his whole calloused hand around hers. She squeezed hard, and held on for a moment; he squeezed back.

  
She let go after a pause that stretched out like caramel, feeling self-conscious, and looked at her feet, the ceiling, the fire, anything. She reached for a tie and braided her loose, half-damp hair, but that only kept her occupied for so long. She cleared her throat.

 

“I should ward the entrance,” she said.

 

“I’ll do it,” Cassian said. “You killed that Hish and then landed a Paperwing. You must be exhausted.”

 

“I - well,” Jyn said, and shrugged gracelessly. She was, and her eyelids felt like they were made of lead, but that wasn’t important.

 

Cassian got up and went to the mouth of the cave. Jyn busied herself organising her bedroll on the opposite side of the campfire, near her bells, which was when she noticed that Mogget’s bright green eyes were open a crack.

  
“Were you listening in?” she hissed, furious.

 

“Yes,” Mogget yawned, stretching, and added with deep sarcasm: “It was  _ fascinating _ .”

 

“Mind your own business!” Jyn snapped.

 

Mogget smirked.

 


	15. Chapter 15

The morning dawned grey and misty, which meant they had to wait for the sun to burn off the sea fog before taking off. Jyn had planned to leave at dawn; she paced and stared at the sky and did stretches and simple exercises and tried not to think about whatever might be happening to her father, who had been subdued by the creatures that had killed his wife, and who must be wherever Krennic had gone now. The only thing keeping her temper in check was the fact that Bodhi was equally antsy, and that he nonetheless insisted they could not safely take off.

 

“My father said Krennic would go south,” she said over breakfast, which mostly consisted of oatcakes, the same herbal tea a sending had given her in the Glacier, and dried fruit. “Following the shoreline. So we’ll have to do that too.”

 

“If he left the consulate with Galen, he must have gone to the Ratterlin Delta,” Bodhi said. “It’s his power base. He has lots of little hideyholes - Galen and I were mapping them - but the majority of the Wallmakers’ wealth and weaponry is there, and it’s the only place he could hope to hold Galen. There are eyots among the marshes, some of them inhabited. Wallmaker’s Town is on the largest.” He eyed Cassian. “I drew a map for Draven.”

 

“I haven’t seen it.” Cassian paused, just slightly. “Bodhi, I don’t know what Draven did to you -”

 

“But we can guess,” Kay interrupted, evidently having finished his book. Jyn bit back a snap, and watched Cassian drop his face into his hands and mutter something despairing. “What? Cassian, it’s obvious what must have happened. General Draven is predictable.”

 

“That wasn’t kind,” Cassian said, with obvious frustration. “Bodhi, I’m sorry.”

 

“For Kay or for Draven?” Bodhi asked. He had gone rather white around the lips, the healthy nut-brown of his complexion as ashen as it had been when Jyn first met him.

 

“Both,” Cassian said. 

 

Bodhi folded his arms and stared at his feet, then said abruptly: “Why do you work for him? You know who he is. I thought you were like him, but you’re not.”

 

Mogget, who had been sleeping on top of Jyn’s bells still, roused and slunk over to sit by Jyn, watching the byplay with interest. Jyn reached for her bells and buckled them on - it was strange how automatic it already felt - and then let her hand come to rest on Mogget’s back, stroking the soft white fur absent-mindedly. He butted his head into her hand to demand scritches, and she obliged, her fingers catching on the red leather of his collar-that-wasn’t-a-collar every now and then. 

 

“I thought it was the best way to serve the Kingdom,” Cassian said. “I still think… There are things I could not have done, otherwise, and things that would not have been done, if I had not been there to do them. But I don’t think he is always right.”

 

“Obviously not,” Bodhi said. “You’re here. You could have come on Draven’s orders, but he made it very clear he doesn’t think Galen can be rescued, and he wouldn’t waste someone like you on an attempt to kill Galen. It would have to be someone he didn’t mind losing when Jyn attacked.”

 

Jyn felt every vertebra in her spine lock into place, and Mogget looked up at her with malicious amusement. 

 

“Didn’t you think of that?” he asked.

 

Jyn said nothing. The truth was that she hadn’t. It would have been her first thought, before the Glacier, before he had listened to her - but that could have been a front, she realised with a sick bitter feeling and the strong notion that she would have disappointed Saw, who had taught her to be wary, disappointed Lyra, who had never been one to trust. _Stupid_ , she berated herself, _foolish_ , _now_ _what the fuck do I do?_

 

Jyn thought she could kill. She was more certain than she would have liked to be. But whether she wanted to kill Cassian was another matter entirely.

 

If he raised a hand to her father -

 

She made herself look at Cassian. 

 

_ There are ways _ , Saw whispered in her mind,  _ to know if someone is telling the truth.  _

 

Saw had let her cross the Wall with this man. Baze had encouraged her to take him south. Colonel Raddus hadn’t liked him, but he hadn’t held him back, either. 

 

“Well, it’s possible,” she said. 

 

“But it’s not true,” Cassian said. He sat down. Bodhi did not sit, but leaned against the cave wall, looking down at Cassian. “You are right - the Abhorsen is a captive, not an accomplice. And Bodhi is right. Anyone Draven sent to kill the Abhorsen would have to be someone he’d made up his mind to losing. If he’d known I’d chosen to go with you, he might have considered it, but he’d also know it would be throwing both myself and Kay away, and he can’t afford that.” 

 

“You’re better with a sword than I am,” Jyn pointed out, surprised, but more willing to believe Cassian than she would have been if he had simply pointed out that Mogget was making mischief. “And nearly as good a Charter mage.”

 

“You wear the bells,” Cassian pointed out. “You could walk me all the way to the Ninth Gate before anyone could lift a finger.”

 

Jyn felt cold all down the back of her neck. “But -”

 

“But she could not walk me,” Kay interrupted, both annoyed and obviously upset for Cassian’s sake. “I am not alive, so I cannot die, and the chances of her being able to unravel me -”

 

“Abhorsens can use Free Magic,” Cassian interrupted right back. “With care, but they can. Jyn doesn’t need to pick you apart.”

 

Jyn remembered the way the Hish had screamed, the burst of vapour it had become, and felt slightly sick. She didn’t like Kay, but she didn’t want to kill him either - and much though various scholars and apparently Kay himself might disagree, it would be killing.

 

“Let’s just agree,” Jyn said through clenched teeth, “that nobody is killing anyone.”

 

“Nobody?” Mogget enquired, licking one paw daintily. “Because I can think of a necromancer or two you may wish to rid the world of -”

 

“Nobody in this cave is killing anyone in this cave or my father and we are definitely not betraying each other,” Jyn corrected, glaring at Mogget. “All right?”

 

“Limiting,” Mogget complained, grinning with those sharp little teeth. Kay looked as if he were about to take issue with that.

 

“I’m going to check on the Paperwings,” Bodhi announced. 

 

“I’ll go with you,” Jyn said hastily, and hurried out of the cave to the sheltered part of the beach where they had left the Paperwings. They were fine, as Jyn had expected them to be; Bodhi looked over each one with solicitous care, and then squinted up at the sky.

 

“We can leave now,” he said. “They’ll be able to fly in this.”

 

“Shotgun Mogget’s not in my Paperwing,” Jyn said.

 

Bodhi clearly had no idea what a shotgun was, but he also clearly took Jyn’s point. “He’s a servant of the Abhorsen,” he said. “Abhorsen-in-Waiting or not, you’re not getting away without him.”

 

Jyn swore comfortably at Bodhi, and then tensed when she saw Cassian step out of the cave, his dark hair shining in the weak sunlight filtering through the clouds. Cassian glanced around, and then his eyes locked onto her. Jyn squared her shoulders, and stared back at him. 

 

Bodhi looked between them both, then let out a small, inexplicable sigh. “And back inside with me, then,” he said, which Jyn did not understand at all. She was about to demand an explanation, but then he was gone, and Cassian was almost in front of her. They had crossed paths briefly, and stopped to speak with each other, but they were far enough away that the wind stole their words, and Jyn could not see their faces.

 

“I really didn’t come to kill your father,” Cassian said.

 

Jyn squinted at him, and then nodded. 

 

He moved to stand beside her, leaning against the Abhorsen-blue Paperwing, staring out over the quiet grey sea.

 

“What did you say to Bodhi, just now?”

 

“I apologised again. Properly.” Cassian sighed. “It was wrong, what Draven did. He thought it was for the good of the Kingdom - but it’s clear Bodhi didn’t need to be forced to speak and Draven shouldn’t have done it. I wasn’t there. I hope I would have argued against it. But that wouldn’t have stopped Draven.”

 

“And taking Bodhi to search the House?”

 

“That I do believe was necessary,” Cassian said. “Dangerous and unkind, but necessary. It made it possible to look for any traces of your father with relatively little danger. The House knows Bodhi, because…” He came to an embarrassed halt, and coughed.

 

“Because he’s my father’s lover.” Jyn felt the tips of her ears heat. “Yes. I know.”

 

“Bodhi told you?” He sounded surprised.

 

“He didn’t need to. I’ve got eyes.” Jyn sighed. “Look, you don’t need to apologise to me, or reassure me you’re not going to kill my father. I know. I believe you. And it’s not me you hurt.”

 

Cassian nodded.

 

There was a silence, broken only by yelling gulls and the crashing of the waves at low tide. Jyn wondered if Bodhi was waiting for an explosion or shouting or something, and how he’d prevented Kay and Mogget from coming out to see what was happening.

  
“Where did Kay come from?” she asked. “Did you make him?”

  
Cassian shook his head, and then paused, and then shook his head again. “Kay is… I found him in the cellars of a minor lord with grand ambitions, seven or eight years ago. Well, I found most of him.”

 

“Seven or eight years ago?” Jyn repeated, startled, and swung forward to peer into Cassian’s face. He recoiled very slightly. “But you must have been a child. You’re not much older than I am.”

 

“I’m older,” Cassian said. “Twenty-one.”

 

“How do you know how old I am?” Jyn demanded.

 

“The birth of an Abhorsen-in-Waiting is an event,” Cassian said patiently. Jyn pulled an involuntary face. “It’s relevant social information. If you were at all political -”

 

“You can forget that -”

 

“- obviously, but even so. You’re of a Charter bloodline. That confers a certain status.” Cassian paused. “You’re eighteen. Your birthday is the first of October.”

 

“ _ Bollocks _ ,” Jyn said, meaning every syllable.

 

Cassian gave in and grinned. 

 

“What were you doing in a secret cellar at the age of… of thirteen or fourteen?”

 

“Exploring.” Cassian turned his gaze out to sea. “Lord Bail had gone there to visit the lord in question; I was acting as his page. He was supposed to be questioning the lord officially. He suspected something was wrong, so sent me to look around. I ended up in the cellars because it seemed most interesting, and Kay was there.”

 

“Most of him, you said earlier.”

 

“Mm.” Cassian folded his arms. “The lord had tried to make a guard sending; he had all the materials, but there was something not quite right. The original materials were second-hand rather than fresh, and might have been meddled with, or he carried out the spell… not poorly, but in a way he hadn’t intended. It led Kay to be able to repeat anything said around him.” Cassian paused. “It made him an extremely valuable witness. Lord Bail was delighted. He allowed me to keep Kay as a reward, and because he said it would be a waste to leave Kay in a cellar.”

 

“What happened to the lord?” Jyn asked. She didn’t know much about justice in the Old Kingdom, and had a vague notion that she was about to hear about an execution.

 

“He went to prison,” Cassian said indifferently, but then his tone sharpened: “bribed his way out, and then attempted a spell too great for him and burned himself to death.”

 

“Huh,” Jyn said, absorbing this, and then pointed out that this didn’t explain how Kay had gone from a botched guard sending who could repeat words to the extremely literal but otherwise apparently totally human sending in the cave. 

 

“I finished him,” Cassian said. “Well, I undid some bits that didn’t work - he couldn’t move his left arm - and redid some bits that could have been better. It took a year or two, I used magic that I wouldn’t care to try casting again, and I still don’t remember what I did that created Kay’s… personality. I don’t think it was truly something I did. None of the marks I know I used should have done that. I think it was always part of him.” He unfolded his arms, and rested his elbows on the Paperwing’s gunwales. “A number of people were very angry with me. Kay is not always easy to be around, and several people said his existence was blasphemous.”

 

“Against what?”

 

Cassian shrugged. “I think they meant he was inconvenient.” He looked down and smiled at his feet, which surprised Jyn until he added: “Lady Breha declared he was the best piece of spellwork she’d ever seen. He was also the only guard Lady Leia couldn’t trick into believing she was where she was supposed to be; I think that played a part. Lady Breha gave him livery to wear.”

 

Jyn smiled too. “What about his name?”

 

“He chose that,” Cassian said. “He already knew who he was.”

 

He looked away, and Jyn was at a bit of a loss as to why, until she saw Bodhi jogging towards them.

  
“Are you finished?” Bodhi yelled.

 

“Finished with what?” Jyn shouted back.

 

She could see Bodhi’s eyeroll from here. “Never mind!”

  
  


They flew south. Bodhi took the lead, this time; he knew the Ratterlin Delta well enough that (he said cheerfully) he could fly it in his sleep. Jyn took this as an excuse to go to sleep in the back of the Paperwing. She had not slept well since the Clayr’s Glacier; she kept hearing the Hish laugh in the back of her head, and jolting awake. 

 

It was a considerable distance. They stopped for a break an hour or so before noon, and Bodhi - the least suspicious-looking of them - walked in to a village to buy food; munching on savoury cheese and chewy bread, Jyn listened while Bodhi outlined a plan. They couldn’t approach the Wallmakers directly, but there was a town not far away that supplied the Wallmakers with food, and in its turn grew rich from the Wallmakers’ markets. They could find out what was known about Galen’s captivity there, if anything, and hire boats to take into the marshy delta.

 

Cassian nodded approvingly. “That’s a smart way of doing it.”

  
  
“Wallmakers are commonly intelligent,” Mogget said, approaching some smoked fish with delicacy. He was eating it with every appearance of enjoyment, flake by flake. “Which is why it puzzled me when you took up with the Abhorsen.”   
  


Bodhi blushed and ducked his head and muttered something. Jyn pinched the bridge of her nose.

 

“What do you mean, the smartest decision you ever made?” Kay demanded, his hearing significantly better than everyone else’s. “Look where on earth it’s led you.”

  
  
“At least I’m not back in the Delta, hiding from Krennic, pretending nothing’s out of the ordinary,” Bodhi retorted. He got to his feet abruptly and twisted his hands; crumbs fell to the floor. “The people there - most of them are no better or worse than I am.”

 

“On the other hand,” Jyn felt compelled to point out, “they’re there, and you’re here.”

 

“Cassian knows what I mean,” Bodhi said, and walked away.

 

Jyn looked at Cassian, who had discovered something unsatisfactory with one of his knives and was now examining it minutely, and rubbed her hands over her face. She hadn’t meant to upset Bodhi, and she suspected she knew what he meant about Cassian understanding his feelings, and she had no intention of unloading the can of worms that was Cassian going absent without leave  in order to support her attempts to rescue her father.

 

Could you be shot for going absent without leave in the Old Kingdom?

 

Moot point, Jyn told herself. It wouldn’t happen to Cassian, because she would personally spit Draven like tomorrow’s dinner if he tried.

 

Bodhi came back, looking perfectly steady and normal, before the end of their planned break, and carried out careful flight checks on both Paperwings. Jyn apologised to him nonetheless, as soon as they got in the air. 

 

“It’s fine,” Bodhi said, and paused. “Well, I mean, it’s not fine, but it’s not going to change.”   


  
“I can try to make sure none of them get hurt,” Jyn offered, uncertainly.

 

Bodhi stilled for a moment, and then shook his head. Jyn bit her tongue to stop herself talking.

 

“The most important thing,” Bodhi said finally, “is that we stop Krennic. The second-most important thing is that you stay alive. You and your father.”   
  


“Your friends - the people you used to work with -”   
  


“Most of them are Krennic’s creatures and they’re going to destroy the Kingdom if they carry on doing his bidding.” Sitting behind him, Jyn couldn’t see Bodhi’s face, but the lines of his shoulders were very tense. “And only an Abhorsen is going to bring down Krennic. Or the Emperor.”

 

Jyn let out the breath she’d been holding, useless air she didn’t know what to do with. Hesitantly, she leaned forward and put a hand on Bodhi’s shoulder. Most of the time he didn’t seem that much older, even though she knew he was at least a decade her senior, but now he sounded as old as her father.

 

“I made my decision a long time ago, Jyn,” Bodhi said.

 

She squeezed his shoulder and sat back.

  
“Thank you, though.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amira and Matariki will be familiar to readers of _spes semper mihi adest_ or _This Crude Matter_.

After a few more hours of flying, the sun lowering slowly in the sky, Bodhi began to whistle them down into the marshy Delta, and Cassian - somewhat behind them - followed suit. The sun was in Jyn’s eyes, and she couldn’t see a thing, but Bodhi seemed confident; she shaded her face and looked over the side, and saw below the Ratterlin shining like braided silver, strips of marsh thick with reeds, and here and there little islands, flat and empty-looking - except for one, in the distance, which had walls the same bright white as Abhorsen’s House, high buildings with steep roofs, and several large jetties. It was surrounded by water, the braided streams cutting to either side of it, and for one mad moment Jyn thought Bodhi was going to try to land there. Then they circled lower and she spotted another inhabited eyot, almost directly below. This one looked like a village; it wasn’t walled, and had an open square that Bodhi seemed to be aiming straight for. Jyn hoped he would not land on the Charter stone.

 

“Seems risky,” she said. “Landing this close.”

 

Bodhi shrugged. “If we don’t want to approach by Paperwing, which Krennic would definitely notice, we need a boat. If we need a boat, the easiest place to get it is here. Wallmaker’s Town has no watchhouse, and they won’t be looking to the village for trouble.”

 

“I don’t see a ship for Krennic’s device,” Jyn said, worried. “If they were at Nestowe, say three days ago -”

 

“Nestowe’s not far. Less than a day’s sail north. But Krennic couldn’t bring a seagoing ship in as far as Wallmaker’s Town; this far inland it’s shallow-draught boats only.”

 

Jyn fidgeted, staring at the approaching ground. Mogget crawled out of her pack and insinuated himself onto her lap; she stroked him absent-mindedly and wrenched her hand out of the way when he went to seize it. There were clouds rolling in from the sea. She hoped not a storm, or their escape in the Paperwings would be cut off. But in any case they might need to find a different way for some of them to escape, since there would be little room in the Paperwings for her father. Perhaps if he was seriously injured she could send him overland with Bodhi, to the House, and she could fly south to confront Krennic. Or get out to sea, and down to the outposts near Lington Hill, where the naval men knew Saw, and by extension Jyn. Or hide her father in the village, draw Krennic out, and defeat him here. Better to stop Krennic before he reached the Wall.

 

She was so absorbed in planning that she started when they landed, and nearly threw Mogget overboard; she crushed him to her chest reflexively and asked if he was all right.

 

“No,” Mogget said coldly, face squashed against Belgaer. “Let me go.”

 

Jyn released him hastily. “Sorry. I was afraid I was going to drop you.”

 

“Thank you for your consideration,” Mogget sniped, grooming his tail back into shape.

 

Cassian and Kay landed beside them, in the limited space left on the muddy eyot, before Jyn could answer. Bodhi hopped out, and Jyn followed him, stopping and staggering briefly as Mogget leapt onto her shoulder.

 

“I have every intention of seeing where Abhorsen has got to,” Mogget informed her, fur in her face. “And I have no intention of getting my paws muddy. Do stand up straight.”

 

Jyn swore at him, but did not push him off. He curled around her neck like some kind of scarf, the tiny replica of Saraneth around his neck jingling, and Jyn settled her shoulders to accommodate his slight weight better. It was strangely comforting to have him there.

 

“You have a plan,” she said to Bodhi. “What is it?”

 

Bodhi flushed a little to be the centre of attention. “There’s a boatwoman I know. She runs supplies out to the Wallmakers, but she hates most of them. A lot of the townsfolk do. Krennic encourages - uh… arrogance.” Bodhi shifted from foot to foot. “There are a lot of Wallmakers who think - or have been persuaded to think - that they’re better than other people because they’re very good Charter mages.” He shook his head. 

 

Cassian nodded slightly to himself. Jyn glanced at him, but didn’t ask.

 

“They don’t hate me. I take letters, packages, sometimes people, for free, when I fly.” Bodhi shrugged awkwardly. “It’s… I have the room, and you never know when you’ll need goodwill. Amira, the boatwoman, she helped me get out. And they’ve all lied for me a few times.”

 

Cassian’s nod this time was more distinct, and obviously approving. 

 

“Sensible strategy,” Kay said dispassionately.

 

“I didn’t know you had it in you,” Mogget said. 

 

Jyn just smiled, but that was what made Bodhi smile back. 

  
  


They approached the village via a circuitous path. From the air, it looked as if the marsh and river were inextricable, and there was no safe road between eyots; but Bodhi obviously knew the area like the back of his hand, and led the way carefully through a sea of reeds, marsh-grass, and ground so soft that Jyn sank into it up to her ankles, silty mud sucking at her feet each time she lifted them. The village itself showed a tough face to the outside, with no ground-floor windows on the walls facing out, and a wide clear water channel between the eyot and the landbridge Bodhi had brought them to. Boats were drawn up onto the ground by a two-story boathouse, its wide ground-floor door closed and barred from the inside, and two tall sturdy posts anchored a bridge that consisted of two ropes - one at ground level, and one at shoulder height. There was a raft ferry a few hundred metres away, but the raft was moored on the other side of the stream and unattended, and Bodhi made determinedly for the rope bridge.

 

Jyn sighed deeply, and wondered if all small Old Kingdom bridges were designed to dump passers-by in the water.

 

Mogget poked her in the neck with a claw. “I don’t like swimming.”

 

“Fine,” Jyn said irritably, and edged along the bridge after Bodhi, who seemed to think this was another ordinary Tuesday in the Delta. It wobbled under her feet, and she tried not to breathe too hard in case it snapped, but she reached the other side safely and glared wordlessly at Bodhi.

 

He shrugged. “Amira’s not very trusting.”

 

“And she lives here?” Jyn looked up at the boathouse, which looked unoccupied. Fine curtains had been drawn over the windows at the top floor, though, so it was impossible to tell. The whole thing had been painted, not in the gleaming whitewash and black detailing she’d seen in the fancy quarters of Belisaere, but in blue and green stripes with white sills and sashes to heavily-spelled windows - and a single door to the second floor, which was accessible by stairs only. Some part of Jyn that had been raised by Saw noted that the staircase was solid enough, but would be easy to hack off if necessary, removing access to the upper floor. Amira, whoever she was, clearly took living on the outskirts of the village seriously.

 

“She does,” Bodhi said, as Kay wrestled with the rope bridge and Cassian watched him anxiously. “Well, she and her wife do. Matariki. She’s not local any more than I am.”

 

“Northerner?”   
  
“No,” Bodhi said. He’d told Jyn on their way to the Glacier that he’d been born to a northern mother south of the Greenwash, and raised in High Bridge; it seemed like years ago that she’d had to ask him where High Bridge was. “From a seafarer city to the west, she says.”

 

Jyn made a listening noise, and then glanced around to see Kay hit solid ground. “All sorted?”

 

Kay made a sound that was so much like a spitting cat Jyn had to bite her tongue. 

 

Bodhi coughed. “This way,” he said hastily, and led them all up the stairs.

 

  
There was someone at home; someone with very fair hair in two thick braids down her back, and a face covered in purple tattoos, swirling in specific patterns of dots. They curled onto her hands, too, and beneath the collar of her shirt. Jyn knew the practice was Southerling, Saw had told her about the way they carried lives and oaths on their skins, but she didn’t know what the dots meant. Or why they were purple.

 

“Amira!” Bodhi exclaimed, obviously relieved.

 

“Bodhi,” Amira said, inclining her head in a stately fashion. “Good to see you’re not dead after all. And you’ve brought the Abhorsen-in-Waiting for tea. How nice.”

 

She was so sardonic, and her dark eyes were so narrow - Jyn thought it looked as if she had had to be cynical for such a long time that her face had stuck that way, but it also looked as if she disliked Jyn - that Jyn thought for a second she was being insulted. But then Amira said “It’s about time someone rescued that man from that bastard Krennic,” and Jyn leapt instinctively over the threshold.

 

“You’ve seen my father? He’s alive?”

  
  
“He was a couple of days ago,” said a voice from further inside the house, and Jyn abruptly realised that a spelled crossbow was pointed at her midsection. The woman pointing it was tall and solidly built, though she was currently sitting down at a kitchen table with several lacy doilies on it; she reminded Jyn somewhat of Baze.  “Amira didn’t see him, I did. He was fine, but he didn’t look pleased to be Krennic’s guest. Steady on, kid.”

 

 “Hello Matariki,” Bodhi said. “Please put the crossbow down. Jyn’s not going to hurt anyone. Can we come in? It’s been a long flight south.”

 

“You can’t hang around on the doorstep, that much is for sure,” Amira said, ushering them all in. “Darling, don’t shoot anyone. You know it makes a mess.”

 

Matariki laid down the crossbow, and jerked her chin at Jyn. “How’s your sponsor? Old Saw still coughing his way around Bain?”

 

Jyn stared at her. 

 

“When I said boatwoman,” Bodhi murmured discreetly, “you’ve got to realise I also meant -”

 

“Smugglers,” Mogget completed, not even a little discreetly. Jyn looked sideways, but Cassian’s face was professionally neutral.

 

“But Saw -” Jyn began, then stopped and reconsidered that thought. Did she  _ know  _ Saw wasn’t a smuggler? He knew the Borderlands better than anyone, and retained a network of connections among the Ancelstierrans stationed near the Wall that would make an angel weep. And his attitude to the law was forensically critical even when he respected it, which he mostly did not. 

 

Matariki and Amira were smirking at her. Jyn lifted her head and smirked right back. “You learn something new every day.”

 

“That’s the spirit,” Matariki said. She took her crossbow apart; she had apparently been working on cleaning its components until they had arrived.

 

“Tea?” Amira said, and served them all some kind of sweet spiced blend Jyn didn’t recognise, along with small cakes that she absolutely did, because they were made of fruity, brandy-laced Ancelstierran gingerbread, common in the north. Where nobody used industrial machines to make anything, because they broke down every time the wind blew in the wrong direction. 

 

Jyn said nothing and ate her gingerbread. This seemed like the place to stick to Miss Prionte’s dictates on manners, given the doilies and the immaculate state of the boathouse, so she fidgeted until the first cup of tea had been drunk and only then spoke up.

 

“You said you’d seen my father. Two days ago.”

 

“Yes,” Matariki said, putting the crossbow back together and sighting down the barrel at a much-abused dartboard. “I was doing a delivery. Bread, mostly. And then this enormous rowboat comes in with Krennic and an angry-looking man with a face like yours, only thirty years older.” She nodded at Jyn. “He wasn’t wearing the keys or his bells, but I’ve been around a bit. I know what the Abhorsen looks like.”

 

“Was he hurt?” Jyn wrapped one hand into a fist under the table, so that her fingernails bit into the meat of her palm. 

 

“Not that I could see. They weren’t keen for me to hang around.” Amira served Matariki another piece of gingerbread, and kissed the top of her head affectionately. Matariki smiled up at Amira. “All the local servants have been sent home - and spelled not to talk, mostly.”

 

Bodhi set his cup down rather hard and stared at his plate. Jyn nudged his ankle with her foot under the table.

 

“Do you know how we can get in?” Cassian asked. 

 

“No,” Matariki said unhelpfully. “There’s no way in there without Krennic knowing, not now he’s back. You could never get away with half the nonsense you got up to now, Rook.”

 

Bodhi said nothing.

 

“But you may not need to,” Amira said. She took a seat at the table. “One of the maids at Wallmaker’s Town is sister to a boathand of ours. She was born deaf, never speaks aloud. They didn’t bother to spell her. Maybe they didn’t realise she can write. She says they let the Abhorsen sit out on the little west-facing jetty - you know the one, Bodhi -” He nodded, eyes still on his plate - “and watch the sunset.” Amira shrugged. “I’d think it was a one-off, but the Fisher boys were out poaching frogs yesterday, and they said they saw him. He was alone.”

 

“Remarkably insecure,” Kay said, disapprovingly. “Humans are stupid.”

 

“Krennic was once my father’s best friend,” Jyn said, looking at Cassian. 

 

“It’s the kind of thing Krennic would do,” Bodhi volunteered. Everyone looked at him, and he swallowed visibly. “He likes… small mercies. They come at a price.”

 

Jyn looked out of the window. The sun was falling fast in the sky, the light turning gold, time running out. She looked back to Amira and Matariki. “How much to hire a boat?” 

 

“No charge,” Amira said. “Kill Krennic. And don’t sink my boat.” She paused. “Definitely a charge if you sink my boat.”


	17. Chapter 17

In the end they took two boats - a rowboat Jyn could handle by herself, and a low, flat-bottomed punt that only Bodhi could manage with grace or efficacy. Kay and Mogget stayed behind, Mogget because he said the whole enterprise sounded stupid and reckless, and Kay because he was too large to hide easily. Bodhi led the way again, through narrow water paths that led to the Wallmakers’ island; he paused behind a thick crop of reeds, and then let the punt glide slowly forwards, stopping just before he would have become visible. 

 

Jyn pushed gently past him, the two boats clicking lightly against each other, did a quick backward stroke to halt her forward progress, and lifted her oars dripping from the water.

 

It was already dark and shadowed in the reeds, but the water beyond was bright and fiery with the lowering sun’s light, dancing on the fast current that ran a hundred metres or so away, past the walled town. A spelled gate in the wall had been left open; next to it, a large yellow trowel had been painted on the whitewash. A small jetty stood out, enough for little deliveries, but not for any craft of real size. On the end of it sat a man, dressed in a white linen shirt and a grey velvet tabard, embroidered with gold trowels. Jyn recognised her father, though if she squinted she could see there were new lines on his face and more grey streaks in his black hair.

 

He was wearing a strange band on one hand - his right. Jyn remembered what Bodhi had told her about wedding bands, after they’d had supper with Baze and Chirrut. Maybe this was the wedding band her father had worn for her mother. She had never noticed it before.

 

Cassian was examining the Town with some kind of scope. “I can’t see anyone,” he said finally. “Which doesn’t mean no-one is there. Tread carefully, Jyn.”

 

“I’ll be careful as all fuck,” Jyn said, already negotiating the opening onto the channel. Her hands were shaking, but the familiar rhythm of the oars soothed her, and the current wasn’t so strong that Jyn couldn’t cope; Saw had several times taken her out to sea, and had made sure she was strong enough for it, since he certainly couldn’t take any part in the rowing.

 

She couldn’t see her father, or what was happening at the Wallmaker’s Town. The skin between her shoulder-blades itched, and she burned to turn and look at Abhorsen, to see his reaction before he could mask it. He had always been so distant with her. Sooner than she would have liked, the rowboat bumped the end of the jetty; she shipped her oars and reached for the painter, only to find her father kneeling on the end of the jetty, holding a hand out for it and smiling at her.

 

Jyn handed it to him dumbly and watched as he tied up for her with a neat knot Saw had taught her years ago, one she hadn’t known he knew.

 

“Jyn, my stardust,” he said, opening his arms to her. “You found me. Well  _ done _ .”

 

Jyn opened her mouth but choked on her words. She scrambled out of the rowboat, and into her father’s embrace. His arms closed around her very tightly, and Jyn breathed in and smelled - 

 

Metal, and white fire, and - 

 

Jyn recoiled, and nearly fell off the jetty. Galen seized her.

 

“It’s not me,” he said, holding up his right hand. “It’s this wretched thing.” 

 

Jyn stared dumbly at the green glass cuff filled with some white smokey substance that encircled her father’s wrist. Beneath it, a faded, fuzzy black tattoo reflected a mapmaker's compass and a symbol half-remembered from the Charter medallion Jyn was wearing. The tattoo was difficult to pick out: numb with shock, Jyn cradled her father’s forearm in both hands and examined his burned wrist. “But that’s…”   
  


“Orson’s idea of an adorable joke,” Galen said, sounding like an experienced teacher sick of the political manoeuvring of younger staff. “Since our minds are, of course, as one, we too must be bound as one. I have been widowed for the last ten years, and therefore can’t possibly object to being linked to my wife’s murderer.” He let out a slight sigh that sounded deeper than it looked in the movement of his shoulders. “He must jail me somehow, I suppose, and this is lighter than fetters. I can’t leave the bounds of this Town - indeed, anywhere - without his permission.”

 

Jyn flinched at the bitterness under the neat seams of Galen’s words. “Is he here?”   


  
“No, he’s boarding the  _ Devastator _ ,” Galen said, gently pulling his arm from her loose grip. “They will have missed the evening tide, so I imagine they’ll wait for dawn. You’ll be just in time.”    


  
“We’ll be just in time,” Jyn corrected, without looking too closely at his responding smile, or the way he spun the cuff on his wrist. The skin under it was not merely burned but blistered, but Galen had not tried to heal it.  

 

“We need to talk,” Galen said. “How did you find me?”   
  
“Er, well,” Jyn said. “The Regency sent Cassian - sent someone south to tell me you were missing, and then I met Bodhi, and found your notes - thank you for my sword - and we went to the Glacier, and Draven acted like you were -” she caricatured his voice as best she could - “as good as dead already, so I shouted at him and the rest of the Regency, and then I took off to Belisaere without asking permission, and found that the consulate was empty -”

 

“Empty?” Galen demanded, looking alarmed. “Where did the Hish go?”

 

“Oh,” Jyn said. “I forgot about them. No, they were there. Two of them. We killed them.” She hesitated, about to ask her father if they were what she’d thought they were, and then she was seized in another very tight hug.

 

“My clever stardust,” Galen said, into her hair. “You did what I could not.”   
  


“Cassian helped,” Jyn said, but her eyes were stinging with tears. Where had this praise and love and pride been for the last eighteen years? 

 

“Good,” Galen said, stroking a strand of hair behind her ear and smiling at her like she was a masterpiece. “You aren’t made to be alone, any more than your mother was.”

 

Jyn took a deep breath.

  
“I also thank you on my behalf,” Galen said wryly. “I did not enjoy their company in the consulate’s cellars. They told me all kinds of things I wasn’t interested in knowing.”   
  


Jyn thought of what she’d heard from the Hish as she fought them, every described scream of her mother’s, and flinched again.

 

“How much of my notes did you find?” Galen demanded.

 

“Um,” Jyn said. “The ones you left in the cellar at the House, and the message on the desk, and the message in the Wallmaker patents at the Library. Is that -”

 

Her father was already nodding. “That’s everything. But listen, Jyn, there’s one thing you need to know for after Krennic is dead that I did not put down. At least, not in so many words, and you won’t have time to read my diaries. If Krennic is moving this boldly, his master must be ready to end the Kingdom for once and for all.”

 

“You can tell me later,” Jyn said, glancing over her shoulder at the bank of reeds that hid Bodhi and Cassian. The sun was beginning to set. “We need to go now.”

 

“No.  _ Listen _ .” Galen took hold of her shoulders, and she looked back at him almost unwillingly. “You remember the story of Queen Padmé, who died carrying the last prince - or princess - of the Kingdom. Who was killed.”

 

Jyn stared at him and nodded. 

 

“That prince or princess lived to be born. I’ve suspected it for some time. The Great Charter Stones are not damaged, as they would be if there were none of the royal line left, and there is still health and power in the Kingdom. The royal blood is still out there underpinning something, and if you’re going to defeat the Emperor, you’ll need to find them, and put that royal bottom on the royal chair. As soon as you can.”   
  


Jyn’s jaw was hanging in the breeze.

 

“I know it’s a lot to ask -”

  
  
“Father, it’s impossible, and it’s not - look, we need to go -” 

 

“Hush. Jyn. Listen. Bail and Breha Organa knew something about where Queen Padmé’s child went - that’s why they were killed. I thought it was that they challenged Krennic’s power, but what he’s said, and his actions, suggest otherwise. Their murders were a test run, but he would have preferred to turn the weapon on something less public. You don’t test a new invention like that, even if it’s adapted from a previous design; it’s too big and showy. He could just have slipped them poison. No. He had orders to kill them  _ specifically _ , and he’s let slip a lot of little things over the last couple of months, about tying up a loose end, making sure no little inconveniences arise…”

 

“Are you sure he doesn’t mean me?” Jyn asked, thinking of the Gore Crows her first evening in the Kingdom. “I mean, he’s tried to kill me.”

 

“No,” Galen said. “From what he’s told me, he thinks you’re still in Ancelstierre. Which is all to the good.” He kissed Jyn’s forehead, right on her Charter mark, and hugged her again. “I’m so sorry I sent you away, stardust. But it was the only way I could think of to keep you safe. If someone… if Krennic… managed to reach your mother, well… You were safe, in Ancelstierre, with Saw to watch over you. He was always very good with you.”  

 

Jyn submitted limply to this hug, wondering what she thought. There was a time when she would have sweated blood to hear her father say this, and now that she did hear it, she felt empty. In the end she hugged him back, simply because it seemed like the right thing to do.

 

“Bail and Breha had a daughter. Leia. She fled north. I wanted to trace her after her parents died, but there was no time.” 

 

“I know,” Jyn said. “Cassian told me.”

 

Galen nodded approvingly. “Bail and Breha trusted their daughter with a great deal - especially Bail. He once told me he would trust her with his life. My betting is that they knew they were in danger - nobody goes up against Orson without knowing it - and made sure Leia would find out what they knew about the Queen’s child once they died, and would seek them out. Find Leia Organa, and you’ll find the true king or queen.”

 

“One thing at a time,” Jyn protested. The sky had gone violent pink and orange, darkness gathering at its corners. “I mean, I have to get you free, and then catch Krennic, first, and destroy this weapon before it takes down the Wall -”

 

Galen’s smile was full of love, and it was also strangely patronising, like he thought he knew something she didn’t. Jyn felt her hackles begin to rise.

 

The first whistling fireball fell from the lowering sky and crashed into the wall. 

 

Jyn threw herself over her father, and glared wildly up at the vivid clouds, as if any of them had anything to say. If they did, Jyn couldn’t see it. There were running footsteps and screams in the buildings around them, just the other side of the wall, but no-one came out to the jetty where the captive Abhorsen sat. A second fireball and a third  crashed into the Wallmaker’s Town; they must be bargaining on a frontal assault, at least as a distraction.

 

“Ah,” Galen said, as if this were just one more unpleasant surprise, and not a particularly interesting one either. “The Regency.”

 

“No!” Jyn said, not because she disagreed - she couldn’t think of anyone else who would attack the stronghold in the Delta - but in desperate denial that the Regency could stop her rescuing her father now. 

 

“Jyn, my stardust, you’ve met Draven - and I have to say your impression of him was very accurate.” Galen smiled, impossibly calm.

 

Jyn swore and ripped at the cuff around his wrist with her bare hands. The hollow glass should have been easy to break - maybe Bodhi would have been able to do it with a few words - but the smoke curling within it lent the thin shell of glass an extra strength, and the tang of Free Magic burnt Jyn’s nostrils as she tried.

 

She heard the whistle and whip of arrows, the sound of screams, the crash of buildings crumbling. Krennic’s twisted Wallmakers were doomed, and her father was going to die with them. Jyn let out one panicky sob.

 

“Come with me,” she begged, dropping his wrists, knowing he couldn’t set foot off the jetty with the cuff still anchoring him, but unable to stop the words from spilling out of her mouth. “Come with me, please, Father, I need you, I can’t do this alone -”

 

“You are not alone,” Galen said, looking over her shoulder, and Jyn glanced back to see Cassian and Bodhi punting furiously across the open water, both of them looking petrified. Galen’s smile had not left his lips. “And I am always with you.”

 

He kissed her forehead, right over her Charter mark. “I will see your mother again. And one day we will meet again, too, on the other side of the stars. I love you, stardust.”

 

“Don’t give up!” Jyn screamed, over the sound of a section of wall giving way and crashing into the marsh and water. A chunk landed dangerously close to Cassian and Bodhi, rocking their flat boat. “Don’t! You’re not dead yet!”

 

“My time ran out when my best friend killed my wife,” Galen said. He cupped Jyn’s face in his hands. “Everything else has been a postscript, and you are the only part of it that has been worth it.”

 

“ _ No _ ,” Jyn screamed. 

 

“Everyone and everything has a time to die, stardust.”

 

“ _ Stop saying goodbye _ ,” Jyn howled, grasping at her father’s shirt and surcoat, the world a blur through streaming eyes. “Stop saying -  _ why  _ are you  _ always _ saying goodbye -”

 

Cassian’s feet struck the jetty and his hands grabbed Jyn’s shoulders. “Jyn. Abhorsen. It’s time to go.”

 

“I don’t think I have the pleasure of your acquaintance,” Galen said, as if this were some useless sparkling party in Ancelstierre.

 

“Captain Cassian Andor - of the Regency. Sir.”

 

“Ah,” Galen said, sounding amused. “Well. I wonder if General Draven knows you’re here.” 

 

A fireball hit the water near the jetty, making them all stagger with its shockwave and shield their eyes against steam and fragments of burned reed.

 

“I wonder that too, Abhorsen. Are you coming?”

 

Jyn saw her father hold out his wrists. The cuff sparkled through her tears. “Unfortunately not, Captain Andor. This will not break in my lifetime. But my part in this has already ended.” He looked past Jyn and Cassian; Jyn thought it must be Bodhi he was looking at. He was still smiling. “Thank you for trying to save me. It was well done.”

 

“You should go now,” Galen said. “All three of you, while you still can. I don’t want you to see me die.”

 

Jyn ripped free of Cassian’s grip and flung herself at her father. He caught her, and his arms were stronger than she remembered, his grip tighter. 

 

“Don’t forget!” Galen said into her ear. “The true ruler is out there somewhere. Queen Padmé passed beyond the Ninth Gate, but the royal line is not quite gone.”

 

“Father,” Jyn sobbed. 

 

Gently as death, Galen pushed her away.

  
  


 

By the time Cassian, Jyn and Bodhi reached the village - now in a state of disarray, as the villagers tried to work out what the distant explosions were and how to escape them - Jyn already knew. Going by the look on his feline face, Mogget knew too, although she wasn't sure how. Some Free Magic power that his collar contained, perhaps. Or just long experience of Abhorsens.

 

“Don't say it,” Jyn croaked through a throat full of unshed tears. “Please, Mogget, don't say it.”

 

Bodhi, hauling one boat up onto the silty mud of the shoreline, choked and turned away. Cassian, who had not let go of her hand since he helped her out of the rowboat, looked sharply down into her face, and then he knew, too. 

 

Mogget leaped from the boat he had chosen as a perch and padded over to sit somewhat before her feet, staring up into her face with a hard authority that reminded her he had known every Abhorsen for a thousand years, and sat in private judgement on them all. 

 

“Galen meant well,” he said finally. “You will do better.”

 

Jyn let out a dry, painful cough that seemed to come from the deepest recesses of her ribcage. Cassian dropped her hand, wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and pulled her as close as the bells would allow, his grip hard and grounding. Jyn pressed her face against the hidden plates of his armoured jerkin and screwed her eyes shut.

 

Running footsteps approached: she felt rather than saw Cassian shift in response, and they stopped at a respectful distance.

 

“What happened?” said Amira. “What the hell did you do?”

 

Jyn peeled herself reluctantly away from Cassian.

 

“Abhorsen-in-”

 

“Abhorsen,” Jyn corrected, in a voice as harsh as a carrion crow. “I am Abhorsen.”


	18. Chapter 18

The mayor arrived at Amira and Matariki’s house not long after they had hustled Jyn indoors and sat her down with a cup of tea. Cassian had made her take off her wet, sooty surcoat and the heavy gethre hauberk; her bells still hung across her chest for safekeeping, and her clothes were soaked with sweat. She only dimly registered Cassian leaving and going to Bodhi, and was grateful for it when she realised what he was doing. Bodhi had just discovered his lover had been killed by the same people who tortured him, and Galen Erso’s death had only partly been an accident. Jyn felt numb and lead-like, and Bodhi… she couldn’t imagine how Bodhi must feel. She couldn’t seem to think. 

 

Mogget was sitting on the table in front of her, watching her with narrow eyes. She wasn’t sure why, but the way he hissed when the mayor bolted up the stairs and demanded an audience with Amira and Matariki - causing Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi to jump, and Kay to pick up Matariki’s crossbow and aim it thoughtfully at the door - made her twitch with surprise. Mogget had spent most of the last week watching her to see what kind of interesting mess she would make, but now it was like he was watching her to make sure she wouldn’t break down. Perhaps it would inconvenience him.

  
Jyn wasn’t breaking anything, least of all herself, but the mayor seemed to be in the middle of some kind of panic tantrum aimed at her hosts.

 

“ -  _ trebuchets  _ at the Wallmakers’ Town, barges full of soldiers,  _ what  _ did you -”

 

Jyn cleared her throat. It felt full of rust. “They didn’t do anything.”

 

The mayor didn’t listen, so she repeated herself. Her voice was harsh and raucous. Silence fell.

 

“The Wallmaker has betrayed the Old Kingdom,” she said, confidence building as anger welled up within her. It burned. Jyn welcomed it. “He kidnapped the Abhorsen. He seeks to topple the Wall. The Regency tried to counterstrike. They have attacked Wallmaker’s Town. That’s what happened. Amira and Matariki didn’t do anything. Go away.”

 

The silence stayed. Mogget wrapped his tail neatly around himself and licked pointedly at one of his paws. Cassian’s eyes flicked from Jyn, to the mayor, and back again. Bodhi covered his face.

 

“And just who do you think you are?” the mayor demanded, paling and recoiling when he saw her bells without her surcoat.

 

Jyn drew her sword from the belt she had removed, and rested its tip on the floorboards.  _ I was made by the fifty-second Abhorsen for the fifty-third, to bind the Dead and protect the living. _ She could see him read the inscription, and register the beautiful edge her father had put on a blade meant to keep his daughter alive. Jyn should take better care of it. She hadn’t cleaned it properly since the fight in the consulate. 

 

“Go away,” she repeated.  The words became a snarl in her mouth.

 

The mayor stayed rooted to the floor, staring at her with more than a little fear in his face.

  
“I could carry him if that would be more convenient for everyone,” suggested Kay. “Since he seems to be malfunctioning.”

 

“That would be helpful, Kay,” Amira said. “And Cassian, if you could just take the sword away from the Abhorsen before she ruins my floor, that would be appreciated.”

 

Kay moved purposefully towards the mayor. Jyn felt rather than heard Cassian move to stand next to her; he rested his hand lightly over hers on the hilt of her sword, and she let her grip loosen.

 

“A good blade,” he commented, examining it before sheathing it. His voice carried quietly under the sound of the mayor running all the way downstairs, Kay in hot pursuit. “The one you brought up from the cellars?”

 

“It was a birthday present,” Jyn said hopelessly. She had seized on the anger she felt for the mayor, just because it was a relief to be sure of feeling, but now she felt numb and desolate again.

 

“Beautiful work,” Cassian said, very gently.

 

Bodhi stirred in the chair he had slumped into. He had pulled his hair loose of its tie and it fell forward over his face, hiding his expression, but there was no mistaking the choked sound to his voice. “As a craftsman - Galen wouldn’t settle for anything less than the best.” He swallowed hard. There was a dry clicking sound to it. “I remember him making that sword. For you, Jyn, he wouldn’t have anything less than perfection.”

 

Jyn covered her face with her hands and rubbed the heels of her palms into her eye sockets, breathing slow and rusty. “I wish he’d been as good a father as he was a craftsman,” she said, the words bubbling up in her almost without her will, spurred by bitterness. “I wish he’d been as good an Abhorsen. If he had been, I wouldn’t be here with thi - with thi -”

 

Her voice stopped and stuttered, like a broken gramophone record. Cassian rested his hand on her shoulder and squeezed; she leant into the touch, and saw him exchange a significant glance with Amira and Matariki.

 

“I should go and put a diamond around the Paperwings,” he said. “They’ll be fine like that for the night.”

 

“Don’t forget the tarps,” Kay reminded him, closing the door neatly behind himself. “The mayor runs rather fast, I’m afraid I missed him. Cassian, why are Jyn and Bodhi -”

 

“I won’t forget the tarps,” Cassian said hastily. “In fact maybe you should come with me, to make sure I don’t forget the tarps.”

 

“Wise,” Matariki said. “You shouldn’t go alone after dark. In fact, I’ll come with you.” Her voice was low and had a cigarette rasp to it - did they smoke in the Old Kingdom? And if so, what? - so that with her eyes shut, Jyn could almost imagine the voice to be Saw’s; or a sister of his, perhaps, like long-gone Steela in the old photographs. Her eyes prickled again, and she ground her hands into her skull like that would help. 

 

Cassian politely accepted Matariki’s help, and Jyn heard them leave. Jyn breathed for a few more moments, and then stood up, pushing the kitchen chair back with a screech that made her wince. She felt ancient and creaky.

 

Mogget was watching her. 

 

“What?” she said. “I can’t sit here forever. Bodhi needs help.”

 

“Quite,” Mogget said, and curled up and went to sleep.

 

Jyn turned to Amira, who was watching her with measuring but not disapproving eyes, and cleared her throat. “What can I do?”

  
  


When Cassian, Kay and Matariki came back, a stew full of hearty dumpling that would make it go further was bubbling on the stove, and there were four sets of bedding laid out (plus a basket for Mogget). Bodhi had washed his face in a basin and cried himself to sleep; Jyn had sat beside him, holding his hand and feeling useless, and had then been delicately encouraged to wash her own less than fragrant self. Amira had fine-milled lemon soap, expensive-smelling enough that Jyn felt strangely guilty for being grimy and foul: she cleaned herself as best as she could, and took the one clean set of clothing she’d brought with her from her pack when Cassian brought it in. 

 

“You look like you’ve been busy,” Cassian said, and Jyn shrugged awkwardly.

 

“Rather be busy than not,” she said. “After my mother died -” She stopped abruptly, but Cassian was watching her kindly so she carried on. “No-one knew what to do with me, so I just - sat. A lot.” In hindsight it had been a relief to arrive at Wyverley Collge, where there was a timetable she was expected to adhere to.

 

Kay poked around the stew, despite the fact he couldn’t taste or eat any of it. Amira threatened him with a suspiciously pointy roasting fork, and Cassian went to intervene.

 

They didn’t wake Bodhi to get him to eat something - Matariki said, with a look that suggested she knew what she meant, that at least in sleep Bodhi didn’t know what had happened - but they did put down a dish of fish for Mogget, smoked coley poached in milk that he treated with the same care as he had the lishling. He was mean, powerful, and possibly (if crossed) malign, but he had manners. Amira and Matariki ate quietly and quickly, with little conversation besides a few idle questions about their backgrounds and what it was like to fly in a Paperwing, and then went to bed. Cassian and Jyn washed up and did likewise, lying flat on the wooden floor with only bedrolls between them and the floorboards; and maybe it wasn’t surprising that Jyn couldn’t sleep, except that she felt so tired her bones were made of lead, and she kept closing her eyes and willing herself to drift off, but she couldn’t.

 

Noisy sleepers were not popular in sixth-form dormitories. She tossed and turned, but made very little sound. 

 

“What is it?” Cassian breathed, and Jyn froze. 

 

“Sorry,” she said. She’d almost forgotten in her frustration that he was lying so close to her; less than an arm’s length away. Bodhi had taken the cot in a corner, turning his face to the wall for what little privacy there was, and Kay had drawn his own bedding over to the wall by the door and was sitting there like a disturbing rag doll sentry, marble eyes glowing like moonstone in the darkness. Cassian and Jyn had been left with beds next to each other, but neither of them had chosen to move. 

 

Cassian made a vague hushing noise. “What’s wrong?”

 

“I don’t know,” Jyn said, and then added slowly: “I… keep thinking about what Mogget said. That my father meant well, but I would do better.” She turned onto her side and faced Cassian; his face was a shadow only, thrown into relief by the faint light from Kay.

 

“Yes?”

 

“I,”Jyn said, and then paused and started again. “My father… really messed things up, because he… didn’t really see anything he didn’t make. I have all these gifts from him, these notes, this - um - this quest, but I don’t… know him. So I just can’t… miss him, not the way Bodhi does, and I feel - I feel -”

 

She ran out of words, but Cassian was patient, and eventually she blurted: “Guilty.”

 

“Don’t,” Cassian started, but Jyn shook her head impatiently.

 

“It’s not really that,” she said. “It’s... what if my choices are also just bad?”

 

“They aren’t,” Cassian said, and reached over in the darkness. “They won’t be. I know you.”

 

Jyn took his hand. “You met me a week ago,” she pointed out.

 

“I know you,” Cassian repeated. He had very warm, strong hands, with marked sword-callouses.

 

Jyn smiled stupidly, and hung onto his hand. “Cassian.”

 

He waited patiently through several long silent minutes.

 

“I’m glad it was you who came south,” Jyn said eventually, having tried on several sentences for size, and found all of them failed her. Her cheeks were burning anyway. Hopefully he couldn’t see.

 

“I am, too,” Cassian said quietly. It sounded like he was admitting to something else.

 

After a few moments, Jyn loosened her grip, and let her hand rest on top of his instead. He didn’t take it away.

 

Jyn fell asleep like that.

 

In the morning she woke with a start to find that it was not yet morning, but that Bodhi had undone one of the shutters to look out into the pre-dawn charcoal sky, the last stars glittering to quiescence. It must have been the noise that had woken her: Cassian had also stirred. Jyn sat up.

 

Bodhi was leaning against the wall next to the window, staring out of it. He had his hands wrapped around a mug full of coffee - Jyn could smell it from where she sat; good coffee, thick and rich and designed to shake your brain awake - and he looked as if he hadn’t truly slept at all. There was an empty bowl beside him that must have contained the portion of stew and dumplings he hadn’t eaten the previous night, and when he looked at Jyn and Cassian his smile was the faintest Jyn had ever seen it, the last fine sliver of the waning moon.

 

She got up and padded over to stand beside him. “All right?” she asked, inadequately.

 

“Fine,” Bodhi said, but the words were empty.

 

Jyn looked out the window. The village was quiet, shuttered and barred; nothing was moving, no night-watchman, no early risers besides themselves. The window had a direct line of sight to the Charter stone, off to one side of the village square, and marks swum softly beneath its dark grey surface. Jyn could see their glow from where she stood.

 

“Tide’ll be in soon,” Bodhi said. “If we want to make it to the Wall before Krennic, we need to move now.”

 

Behind them Jyn heard the sound of Cassian getting to his feet and hunting for his boots and tunic. 

 

“Yes,” she said, and then added slowly “Bodhi…”

 

He looked at her. She found she didn’t know what to say, and shut her mouth uselessly.

 

“It’s all right,” Bodhi said, with that very thin smile. “It’s all right.”

 

It definitely wasn’t. Jyn dressed and armed herself and left too much money on the table for Amira and Matariki, scooped Mogget (who was sleeping and refused absolutely to wake) into her pack and carried him across the treacherous rope bridge, broke Cassian’s diamond of protection and prepared to leave. The sky was lightening as they left, from charcoal to dove, and faint fingers of light were testing the horizon. And it still wasn’t all right, and right now it felt like it never would be.

 

Jyn took her place with Bodhi in his Paperwing, settling Mogget on her lap instead of leaving him to tip sideways and be squashed in her pack, and sat back and listened while Bodhi whistled them up into the sky and turned the Paperwing for the Wall. If Jyn squinted into the distance she could see it: a fingernail-thin dark line on the horizon.

 

She turned her face to the east and watched the sun rise. Before the glare got too much she thought she could see something, out to sea: a smudge in the darkness, a gleam on something that might have been a ship, not yet underway but waiting.

 

A chill went down Jyn’s spine. She looked south, looking for any hill or high point where they might stop to aim the weapon her father had meant as a gift, and seeing nothing. Because of course there  _ was _ nothing by the Delta, where the land was flat and low - the plateau rose further inland. And Ancelstierre wasn’t much better. Jyn frowned. Even the hills around the sea-loch were hardly more than hillocks, and none of the buildings were above two or three stories high, and too far from the sea to be of much use, except -

 

Bail and Breha Organa had been killed with a blow struck at the top of the Belisaere lighthouses, the grand towers that guarded the Sea of Saere and held the crossing chain. 

 

Lighthouses. 

 

Of course. The Eastern Light. Jyn had been there a thousand times. She’d fished for crabs in the rockpools while Saw talked to his friends. It was easily five stories high, in a direct sightline with the Wall, and broad enough to take the mirrors which now rested at the top. It might be a tight fit - Jyn had only seen the Belisaere towers from the air, but they looked bigger - but her father’s mechanism had been intended for a town’s guard tower. It would fit. 

 

Jyn’s heart was hammering and her breath felt like it had been stolen by the wind. She clutched at the side convulsively, trying not to grab too hard and tear the laminated paper, and tried to force both to calm. This changed nothing. They still had to reach the Wall. 


	19. Chapter 19

The plan was to fly south, stop directly before the Crossing Point, and seek assistance. The plan fell apart two hours later, the Wall still half an hour’s flight away, when Jyn heard screaming and the sounds of battle up ahead, rendered tinny by distance, and looked over the side. 

 

The soldiers looked like dolls from this height, but Jyn could pick out their buff uniforms and round helmets, and knew them for Crossing Point Scouts. The scent of Death rose easily to her nostrils, too, and she had no difficulty in identifying a pack of Dead Hands. They must be desperate or bold to act now, when the sun was full up - given what her father had said about the likely readiness of the Emperor’s plans, it could be either - and the patrol was making heavy weather of fighting them. 

 

The decision was made before Jyn had thought about it. “Spiral down,” she shouted to Bodhi.

 

“We’ll miss Krennic,” Bodhi shouted back. 

 

“They weren’t even underway when we left and the tides are contrary around the Wall,” Jyn countered. “We can’t leave these men to die - and we need some kind of passport across the Wall. Their goodwill will help.”

 

Bodhi hesitated, and then swore, and whistled to spiral down. Jyn shifted Mogget off her lap into a safe little nook by her pack, and drew Saraneth.

 

It was difficult to concentrate as the Paperwing swooped down, and Jyn’s stomach flipped with each steep circle, but she forced all her will into the steady figure of eight pattern, blind to Cassian’s Paperwing circling in concert with their own, deaf to the cries of shock from the ground, or the rotting screams of the Dead Hands who knew that Abhorsen had come. Jyn focussed only on the Hands’ spirits, and on holding them in place, and was so shocked when they hit the ground not twenty metres from the soldiers’ desperate last stand on a bridge the bell almost rang falsely in her hands. She shoved her free hand into the bell before the clapper could strike the metal, and leaped out of the Paperwing as it glided to a halt, staggering and performing an impromptu somersault in the air as the momentum threw her off balance. The Dead Hands seized their second’s opportunity and rushed towards her, but before they could make it anywhere Jyn was back on her feet with Kibeth in her right hand and her birthday sword in her left, Kibeth ringing the irresistible bright jig that spelled doom for the Hands. They screeched and fought, but Jyn overpowered them more easily than she expected with the help of the sunlight, and watched as their spirits shucked their rotten husks, and slipped over the border into Death. 

 

“Watch over me,” she said to Bodhi, who was eyeing her with revolted fascination, took a new grip on Kibeth, and allowed her eyes to focus on a river quite different to the one that washed under the bridge before her. 

 

She had walked in Death before, of course, had even banished creatures under her father’s supervision, but she had only rarely done so alone, and there was a strange feel to the way she did it now. She felt a new authority, and a greater challenge: as Abhorsen, they found her a greater threat than the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, but as a new Abhorsen, they dared to challenge her. She laid a command on them to travel beyond the Ninth Gate without stopping or allowing anything to bar their path, and saw it take effect before she turned and eased back over the barrier into Life. 

 

Ice crackled from her hair and ran down her cheeks, and Kay was standing over her, not Bodhi. Cassian, practical soul that he ultimately was, was helping the patrol’s best Charter mage to burn the bodies. Bodhi appeared to be helping their medic. Most of the men were injured; Bodhi was currently patching up a lieutenant, who couldn’t decide whether to gape at Jyn or the Paperwings.

 

“Oh, you’re back,” Kay said. “Good.”

 

“Thank you for watching over me,” Jyn said. It was considerably more than she had expected.

 

“Cassian said I had to.”

 

“Thank you anyway.” Jyn put her bells and sword away and stretched up onto her toes, lifting her fingers to the sky and swinging her arms. “Do we know who these people are?”

 

“Scouts,” Kay said. “Lieutenant Jorbert and his men. He keeps asking about the Paperwings.”

 

“Hmm,” Jyn said. “I wonder how Bodhi likes that.”

 

“I don’t know if he likes it or not. But I think he thinks the lieutenant is asking the wrong questions. It’s a very military characteristic.”

 

Jyn looked at the Scouts, and thought firstly about the direction of the wind, and whether it would have blown Kay’s words away, and secondly about the intersection between Ancelstierran machinery and the magic that kept Bodhi’s finely built planes in the air. Neither seemed promising. 

 

“Excuse me a moment,” she said to Kay, and then went over to the Scouts. They were all watching her with wide eyes; it made her lift her head and tilt her chin up, defensive.

 

“I suppose you’ve never seen an Abhorsen before,” she snapped. Her voice had softened slightly in the Kingdom, rounded around spells and old words of authority she hadn’t known she knew, and she hadn’t noticed the change until the crisp speech she’d learned at Wyverley came roaring back.

 

“I, er, I was briefed,” said Lieutenant Jorbert. Bodhi stepped away from him, chucked a bloody gauze bandage into the air and incinerated it with a casual sketched cantrip that made Lieutenant Jorbert shy away like a surprised horse. “But, er, I was told the Abhorsen was a man.”

 

“He was,” Jyn said. Her throat hurt again, the same way it had the previous day. “The role is hereditary. He was my father, and now I am Abhorsen.”

 

With a horrible swoop in her stomach, she realised just how many explanations there would have to be; how many people she would have to look in the eye, and say  _ My father was Abhorsen, and now I am _ . She wondered how long it would go on for. Six months? A year?

 

“I, um, I’m sorry for your loss, miss - Abhorsen - Miss Abhorsen.” His men shifted around him, and Bodhi shot him an amused glance, but Cassian’s face stayed carefully neutral, and Jorbert didn’t seem to notice. “You visited Colonel Raddus, I think, I remember Pr- I remember someone saying.”

 

Jyn carefully did not look past Jorbert at the private behind him, who she recognised as the man who had escorted her and Cassian through the Perimeter. 

 

“I did,” she said. “At that time we believed my father was just missing. It turned out he’d been kidnapped.” She smelled white fire and tasted metal in the back of her mouth, and swallowed convulsively. “We’re travelling south on related business. Why are you and your men so far north of the Wall?”

 

A sergeant shifted. He was the same man who had been helping Cassian with the bodies that were now piles of ash; he had a Charter mark strongly graven on his forehead, and the look of a man who had drunk with Saw. And perhaps, Jyn thought, Amira and Matariki too. She knew how to deal with that kind of person. Several of them had been involved in teaching her how to shoot, Saw calling instructions from the kitchen door.

 

The shift was a giveaway, but Jorbert’s glance in the man’s direction was even more telling. Jyn cast the dice. 

 

She walked towards the sergeant, holding her hand out as if to shake hands. “I think we’ve met before. You must know my godfather, Saw.”

 

The man’s granite face cracked into the tiniest smile. He’d been well assigned to Jorbert; he was probably supposed to keep the lieutenant alive. “Don’t think anyone who ever served with Major Gerrera is likely to forget him, Abhorsen.” He bowed his head to her slightly, and though his handshake was strong, it wasn’t crushing.

 

“Just imagine being his godchild.” Jyn folded her arms and looked around. She was surprised to note that Cassian had his arms folded the same way, but passed over it in favour of meeting all the Ancelstierrans’ eyes. “So I take it there’s something on the grapevine. Something coming south that worries you.”

 

“It’s not exactly clear,” Jorbert said nervously. “And I’m not sure I ought to be telling you, miss.”

 

“Abhorsen,” Jyn corrected, and smiled with teeth. “I stopped you all getting killed just now, and depending what rumours you’ve heard, I might have to do it again.” She stiffened her shoulders. “My father did not die of natural causes.”

 

Bodhi pressed his lips together and turned away. Jyn caught Cassian’s eye, and was heartened when one corner of his mouth curled up; not a smile but an acknowledgement.

 

Jorbert and the sergeant shared an extremely long look, and then Jorbert sighed through his nose and nodded. Well, he couldn’t be so green as all that, then, if they communicated like that. 

 

“Two sets of rumours,” said the sergeant. Jyn turned back to him, and caught sight of his nametag: Hardison. Not a northern name, but he had the attitude. “One of something terrible, coming down the coast. Another of parties of armed Old Kingdom soldiers, coming further south than we’ve seen them for decades - exploring parties. Working themselves up to something big.”

 

“What uniforms?” Cassian asked. 

 

Jorbert looked at him like he was about to tell Hardison to stop talking. 

 

“Will you like the question better if I ask it?” Jyn enquired. 

 

Jorbert looked pinched, but he didn’t stop Hardison talking. “Green. Not dark green as such, and not khaki, but not bright either. White badges.”

 

“Regency men,” said Cassian. “Not the Royal Guard. Regent Mothma must have heard you, Jyn.”

 

Jyn swallowed hard. “We knew that from the bombardment. It doesn’t mean they’re doing anything useful. How the hell do they expect to fight Krennic? What do they think they’re going to do? They can’t cross the Wall - not an armed force.”

 

“No, they certainly can’t!” Jorbert exclaimed. “That would be an invasion!”

 

Jyn and Cassian’s gazes both snapped to Jorbert. She wondered if she had ever been as young and stupid as a twenty-one-year-old second lieutenant. 

 

“They would be trying to save you from what’s coming down the coast,” Bodhi said, low but carrying. “It’s not the same thing. And believe me, you don’t want to meet the people coming down the coast.”

 

“And what’s that then, lad?” asked Sergeant Hardison, who had clearly decided to take the avuncular approach to Bodhi’s obvious skittishness.

 

“A weapon that could destroy the Wall,” Bodhi said flatly. “More land for the conquering by someone we should all hope we never cross paths with.”

 

“Excuse you,” said Jyn.

 

“Except for Jyn, who has to defeat him.” Bodhi made an irritable gesture. “But that’s not a problem for today. We have to stop Krennic. We’ve waited here too long.”

 

“If we have to stop the Regency barging in and making a mess we’ve been here just long enough,” Jyn said wearily. “Cassian, how well do they know Ancelstierre?”

 

“On average?” Cassian said. “Not well at all.”

 

“You got across the Wall,” Jyn said, surprised. She would have expected someone who knew nothing about Ancelstierre to struggle.

 

“Yes, and there was no-one else they could send.” Cassian shrugged. “Most of us are trying to hold the Kingdom together. Trouble doesn’t commonly come north.”

 

“I say,” Lieutenant Jorbert said weakly. “This all seems to be getting a bit political. I thought it was a question of life and death.”

 

“Welcome to the Old Kingdom. It’s both.” Jyn scrubbed her hands through her hair in frustration, making strands come loose, and shoved them impatiently behind her ears. “We can’t have them getting involved on the other side of the Wall. If we have to cross back to fight Krennic, well and good. But if he chooses to make his move in Ancelstierre, and I think he will, we cannot have Regency men trying to force their way over the Wall. There’ll be a bloodbath. Krennic will win.”

 

“Why south of the Wall?” Cassian asked quickly. “Why do you think he’ll go south?”

 

Jyn realised she hadn’t shared her Paperwing epiphany with the others. “I thought of it just now, in the Paperwing - the Dead Hands put it out of my head. The only high ground Krennic can use for his machine is the Eastern Light. It’s less than two miles south of the Wall.”

 

“The Navy won’t like that,” Sergeant Hardison pointed out. 

 

“And how do you think they’ll cope against a Free Magic sorceror?” Jyn retorted. “That’s what we’re dealing with.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “One of us will have to stay. To stop the Regency going in with swords aloft. Supposing they make it here in time. I can’t - none of you can fight Krennic. Mogget can’t - they won’t take him seriously, and Charter only knows what he’ll tell them.”

 

“Who’s… Mogget?” said Lieutenant Jorbert, clearly and regrettably determined to take an active part in proceedings.

 

“The cat,” Jyn said.

 

“Best not to think about it too hard, sir,” said Sergeant Hardison.

 

Lieutenant Jorbert shut his mouth.

 

“I can’t stay,” Bodhi said. “I think they’d rather listen to Mogget than me, and nobody else knows Krennic like I do.”

 

“Cassian,” Jyn said, and then words deserted her. She sunk her teeth into her lower lip and tried not to stare at him too hard. She would do this alone if she had to - not exactly alone, but without the only person here she knew for certain would and could fight alongside her, without needing her protection. 

 

“No,” Cassian said roughly. “You are not crossing the Wall to fight Krennic alone, and Bodhi doesn’t have the skills for a pitched battle.”

 

“But -”

 

“I don’t like being forgotten about,” Kay announced in his peculiarly piercing voice. 

 

“Which is good, because no-one could possibly ever forget you,” Jyn snapped back. Kay had now come close enough for the soldiers to see he wasn’t made of flesh and blood, and Jyn purposefully ignored the gasps and swearwords and signs against evil. Cassian had gone the colour of bad cheese. 

 

“Kay -” Cassian said, obviously scared of something, Jyn didn’t quite grasp what; she thought about the way Cassian had been careful not to leave Kay quite alone, or to leave explicit instructions that he should be protected, and wondered if she knew the shape of Cassian’s fear. Unravel, that had been the word she’d heard used before, and it made her sick to think of it now, both of Kay destroyed and of the blow to Cassian - an isolated child who had become an isolated man, whose closest friend was a sending half of his own creation.

 

“They won’t unravel me, Cassian,” Kay said impatiently. “Not just for being  _ annoyed _ . And everyone in the Regency knows I do not lie. They will believe me.”

 

“Unravel,” Sergeant Hardison said, half under his breath. 

 

“Means exactly what you think it does,” Jyn whispered back.

 

“I can’t cross the Wall in any case,” Kay pointed out. “You know that. I may as well wait on the other side of the Wall. I can go with Lieutenant Jorbert and his men, and if they are intercepted, I will be able to talk them out of any trouble.”

 

“Are you sure?” Cassian said, although Jyn wasn’t sure if he meant Kay’s ability to talk anyone out of trouble, or if he meant was Kay sure he wanted to be left alone with them. 

 

Kay hitched his shoulders irritably. “Of course I’m sure. Go away.”

 

“Fine,” Cassian said, and turned eyes that were suddenly burning on the Ancelstierran soldiers. “Kay has offered to help you. If any of you let him get hurt - or try to study him -”

 

“You’ll what?” said the private from before, with studied dislike, and Jyn knew exactly what to do.

 

She stepped smoothly over and laid her hand on Cassian’s arm. He twitched, and she smiled at the private - a toothy smile that had once been Saw’s, but that she’d seen less and less as he grew more and more curmudgeonly. “We’ll go through the proper military channels,” she said. “And then I will go and speak to my godfather.” She crossed her arms casually under her bells, like it was an accident. “Captain Andor here is just upset because he doesn’t know any of you, and he and Kay have worked together since they were children.”

 

“You’re a captain?” Lieutenant Jorbert said, audibly startled. “But you’re my age. You can hardly have left university. And what do you mean, Abhorsen - since they were children?”

 

Cassian looked at Jorbert, and then looked at Jyn.

 

“You heard me correctly,” Jyn said. “There’s no time to explain.” She grasped Kay’s shoulder, and squeezed gently, as if he were a friend. “Be careful, Kay.”

 

“I should be saying the same thing to you, Abhorsen,” Kay said snidely. “Hurry up. You’re wasting time here.”

 

But he watched them all the way into the sky, until even his massive frame dwindled into a doll-sized dot.


	20. Chapter 20

It felt as if they reached the Wall within two breaths. Jyn left Bodhi and Cassian and Mogget in the Paperwings, and walked a slow fifty metres to the Crossing Point. She laid her sword down before the open doorway, and went and sat with her back to the Wall, and waited. The stone felt warm, although the day still had the unpleasant misty chill that had taken over from the dawn, and golden marks swam beneath the Wall’s surface. Jyn patted it like she might have patted Gullet, if Saw’s dog had hated her less: like a friend. 

 

She listened to the chaos and panic on the other side of the Wall, and waited until a party of Scouts advanced from the charred stone of the gate, looking nervous.

 

“Oh good,” she said, squinting up at them. “Please tell Colonel Raddus that the Abhorsen is here, and needs to speak with him immediately, concerning the threat that sent her north.”

 

“The Abhorsen hasn’t been here for years,” the corporal at the head of the picket said suspiciously. “There was a daughter, she went north about a week ago…”

 

Jyn waited for him to arrive at the appropriate conclusion.

 

“Sorry for your loss, miss,” said the corporal. Jyn bit down on the inside of her cheek. “Your mark, miss.”

 

“May I get up?” Jyn said politely. 

 

The corporal nodded, but he watched her carefully as she rose, and the dagger in his hand crawled with Charter marks. She got to her feet and stood still as he approached, hands empty and loose, and let him test her mark. 

 

“Clear,” he announced, and allowed her to test his in return. “Sorry, Abhorsen, but you know what it’s like on the Perimeter.”

 

“I do.” Jyn pinched her lips together. “If I may not pick up my sword, could someone please get it out of the mud? And I’d be very much obliged if no-one shot my companions. I wouldn’t have got this far without them and I won’t get much further without them.”

 

“In the… gliders?” The corporal spared them a glance, and Jyn, following his gaze, suddenly thought how alien they looked. They had seemed such a normal part of the Kingdom to her, after the first mad flight, that she had forgotten how strange they’d look in the cold khaki light of Ancelstierre. Next to the patrol, they suddenly looked wild and exotic and ostentatious. And probably, if you were an Ancelstierran soldier, quite alarming.

 

“Yes,” Jyn said. “Two men.” She wondered whether to mention Mogget, and decided against. He was most likely still asleep. “We left another companion with Lieutenant Jorbert’s patrol, who aren’t far away. A day’s walk, I should think. They were attacked by Dead Hands, but we managed to save most of them, and Kay will help them with any further trouble they might run into, so I imagine they’ll be back on schedule.”

 

The corporal tore his eyes away from the Paperwings. “Thank you, Abhorsen,” he said, with more deference.

 

Jyn shrugged. “It’s what I’m here for. Please take that message to Colonel Raddus.” She looked directly at the corporal, and was surprised to see him flinch at whatever he saw in her eyes. “There is no time to waste.”

 

The patrol retreated in an enormous hurry, leaving Jyn’s sword behind. She picked it up and cleaned it thoughtfully on her surcoat, then went and pressed her hand against the Wall, and watched the stone glow around her fingers, welcoming her Charter blood. On the other side of the Wall she could hear rushing and hurrying, and in the Paperwings Bodhi and Cassian waited, tense and worried. But here there was stillness. There would not be stillness for much longer.

 

_ Galen meant well, but you will do better. _

 

Jyn heard approaching footsteps and turned her head. This time it was a captain sent to fetch her, pink-cheeked and wearing a staff tab on his shoulder, but familiar enough with the Perimeter to wear the Charter mark on his forehead and to watch the land carefully. He saluted her before she spoke; she bowed her head, and wondered why the gesture came so naturally to her.

 

“Colonel Raddus says he will see you and your men,” the captain said. “At once. If you could follow me, Abhorsen.”

 

“Of course.” Jyn waved at Cassian and Bodhi, who climbed out of their Paperwings after a moment and began the walk over. Bodhi took slightly longer, and when he extricated himself from the Paperwing he was wearing a put-upon glower and something white stuck to his head and shoulders. Jyn muttered under her breath.

 

“What is it?” demanded the captain. His hand went for his revolver, and then changed direction and rested on his sword. The wind blew from the north. 

 

“Nothing important,” Jyn said, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “There’s a… cat that is not a cat… if you know anything about magic you won’t ask me to explain, because I can’t, but he serves and is bound by the Abhorsen. I was hoping we could leave him in the Paperwing, because he’s obnoxious.”

 

The captain looked down at her. “Obnoxious,” he repeated.

 

She looked back at him. “Ever met a cat, captain?”

 

The captain rubbed the end of his nose and sighed. “If you put it that way. You will be personally accountable for his good behaviour?”

 

“Yes,” Jyn said, more firmly than she felt. “And he may be able to help - he knows a lot more of my father’s secrets than most of us do.” Bodhi, still approaching, flinched obviously and stopped to reprimand Mogget. Jyn could have told him that would not work.

 

“This is all very irregular, Abhorsen.”

 

Officials are the same everywhere, Jyn thought. Mon Mothma might have said the word _irregular_ in just the same tone.

 

“You’re telling me, captain.” Jyn folded her arms, and watched Cassian and Bodhi walk the last few metres. “Mistakes have been made over the last twenty years, and now we are reaping the rewards.”

 

There was a brief, reflective pause, and then the captain said: “I’ll thank you not to say that in front of the men, ma’am.”

 

Jyn nodded.

  
  


 

On her last walk through the Perimeter she had been watched, but Jyn felt far more a stranger now than she had done then. Before, she’d known very little more than Ancelstierre, and even though she had been dressed in the clothing of the Kingdom she had walked and talked and breathed Ancelstierran. She felt like a week had wrought a greater change in her than she could account for by a little fighting. And now the eyes on her came with whispers of  _ Abhorsen _ , and one day soon the wind flutes at the Perimeter would need to bear the mark  _ 53A _ . She hoped her father’s instructions on how to remake them were clear. 

 

Colonel Raddus also clearly saw a change in her. His dugout was no different, even the sentry was the same, and he himself might just have returned from escorting Miss Erso across the Wall. But those shrewd eyes narrowed, and that mottled skin paled a little, when he saw her.

 

“I see a great deal has happened since we last met,” he said, and hesitated for half a second. “Abhorsen. I’d hoped we wouldn’t be seeing you again so soon.”

 

“I haven’t come to replace the wind flutes,” Jyn said. “Or at least, it’s not just that.” She stepped inside the dugout, and saw Bodhi and Cassian and Mogget inside before the door closed. Colonel Raddus shooed the captain out, and gave the sentry a hard look obviously designed to militate against gossip. (Jyn wished him luck.)

 

“You seem taller,” Colonel Raddus said. “And if you’ll forgive my pointing it out, you look more like your mother.”

 

Jyn twitched self-consciously. “I went walking in Death to get some of your men out of a little trouble. My colouring’s still changing.”

 

“It’s not just that,” Colonel Raddus said slowly. “Mrs Erso always looked as if, once she’d set herself on a purpose, nothing could deny her.”

 

“Well,” Jyn said quietly, and nothing else. Her mother’s necklace swung against her breastbone, and Cassian and Bodhi were quiet. 

 

Colonel Raddus stuck his head out of the door and called for a pot of tea. 

 

It arrived moments later, and Jyn poured four cups automatically, her hands moving among the tea-things while her brain tried to grasp onto the important details. It had seemed so essential at dawn to get here, and to get here fast; and now noon must be approaching, and she didn’t know what to say.

 

She glanced at Mogget, still draped idly over Bodhi’s shoulders, and poured a saucer of milk and laid it down on the nearest filing cabinet.

 

“You are unusually thoughtful, for an Abhorsen,” Mogget remarked, digging all his claws into Bodhi’s shoulders and leaping off. Bodhi winced. “But you really ought to get on with it.”

 

Colonel Raddus did not look shocked. But then, if he’d seen Lyra Erso often enough to recognise a resemblance in her daughter’s face, he must have encountered Mogget before. Perhaps Mogget had been there, fifteen years ago, when the Dead rose and the Crossing Point almost fell.

 

“Start at the beginning, Abhorsen,” he said, “and carry on until you get to the end.”

 

Jyn licked her lips, and pulled words out, slow and rusty. “I should start by saying,” she said, slowly, “that it turned out my father wasn’t… missing. He had been kidnapped.” She tilted her head slightly in Bodhi’s direction. “Allow me to introduce Bodhi Rook.” There was a small dance of teacups and awkwardness. Bodhi obviously didn’t like Ancelstierran tea and wasn’t at all sure about Ancelstierran manners. “He was a Wallmaker - they’re a… a guild of elite craftsmen who use magic. My father loved to invent and build, and when he was young  he was close friends with a man called Orson Krennic, who became  _ the _ Wallmaker. The head of the guild. But Krennic turned bad. He killed my mother. He turned one of the designs he and my father created into a Free Magic weapon. My father caught him out. He went to confront Krennic, but he was captured instead.”

 

Jyn took one deep breath after another. 

 

“And this is when you came south, Captain Andor,” Colonel Raddus said, looking over Jyn’s shoulder. Jyn could almost see Cassian’s serious confirming nod.

 

“My father had left messages for me,” Jyn continued. “I picked them up at Abhorsen’s House. We went to the current seat of the Regency to lay out what had happened and asked for help.” Her jaw tightened so hard it almost creaked at the memory of that marble table surrounded with hostile faces. “They didn’t believe us. They refused.”

 

“And how does that sit with you?” Colonel Raddus asked over her shoulder, quiet and reasonable, but Jyn knew as if Saw had told her that there was a revolver in his desk drawer.

 

“Ill,” Cassian said shortly. “They knew Jyn - the Abhorsen - was telling the truth. They should have listened.”

 

“So you are here against orders.”

 

“I didn’t wait to receive orders to the contrary.”

 

“Is the punishment for mutiny in the Old Kingdom death?”

 

Colonel Raddus was speaking Jyn’s own earlier thoughts. She raised her head, and spoke aloud the last of them. “Over my dead body.”

 

Both men fell silent. Then Colonel Raddus looked between the two of them and inclined his head to her with respect. 

 

Jyn swallowed and carried on. “We flew south. Missed them at Belisaere. Found them at Wallmaker’s Town. But - the Regent must have changed her mind after we left. They attacked Wallmakers' Town. We found my father but couldn’t free him in time, and… he died in the bombardment.” She set her teacup down too hard. It clattered. “That was yesterday evening.” 

 

She took a deep breath. “We need a map. From here to the east coast, including the Eastern Light and the dockyards there.”

 

Colonel Raddus reached across and pulled a leather map-case from a shelf. Jyn moved the tea tray and helped him unroll it, weighting the curling corners down with the sugar bowl and milk jug. The map was parchment, and she recognised the hand that had sketched in a few miles’ worth of land and sea, north of the Wall. Her fingers stuttered on the paper.

 

“Your mother’s work,” Colonel Raddus said, as if reading her mind. “Mrs Erso said the less time we spent blundering into obvious traps and annoying the locals, the less time she and Abhorsen would spend mopping up after us.”

 

“Sounds like Jyn,” Bodhi muttered, abandoning his mostly-full cup of tea and leaning forward to examine the map. Mogget stuck his head into the cup instead.

 

Jyn cleared her throat. “Krennic wants to destroy the Wall, to serve his master, a greater necromancer and Free Magic Adept. He needs high ground or a tall building to focus the weapon from, and the only place I can think of is here.” She tapped the little cluster of printed buildings that made up the naval base and dockyards surrounding the tiny lighthouse symbol. “I know it’s a naval yard, not a soft target, but it’s the only place Krennic can use. He will take it.”

 

“When do you expect him?”

 

Jyn closed her eyes and tried to calculate the little she knew or could guess of the changeful waters around the Wall, and the speed of the ship and the barges she had glimpsed that morning. “They were just south of the Ratterlin Delta at dawn this morning. Time moves strangely and the water’s tricky around the Wall, but say… two in the afternoon.” She glanced around for a clock and saw none. “It was noon when we crossed the Wall.”

 

“Not here,” Colonel Raddus said. “You’ve gained time. It’s no later than eleven. What do you need, Abhorsen?”

 

“A car and a pass to the naval yards,” Jyn said. “If we can get there in time we can do the rest.”

 

“Well, that’s easily enough arranged, but it may take an hour or two. The Admiralty -”

 

There was a hasty knock at the door, so hasty that the doorjamb shook, and Bodhi, Cassian and Jyn all jumped. Jyn, already out of her seat, half-drew her sword.

 

“I said I was  _ not _ to be disturbed,” Colonel Raddus bellowed, glowering over his desk. 

 

The door opened. The captain-adjutant who had met Jyn on the other side of the Wall was pale and out of breath, and his sword was loose in his scabbard. “Major Gerrera here wanting to know if there’s news of his goddaughter, sir -”

 

“That isn’t news, Tindall, that’s a day with a y in it -”

 

“And Signals say there’s chatter on the radio from the dockyards at the Eastern Light - dead birds, flying south.”

 

“Dead birds?” Colonel Raddus repeated, and the sight of Gore Crows on the Long Cliffs played behind Jyn’s eyes, and the final horror of her father’s death burst in on her.

 

Jyn seized the back of her chair and clutched at the pommel of her sword, and Cassian jumped up and grabbed her shoulders as if he thought she were going to faint. “What is it?” he said urgently. “Jyn, what is it?”

 

“My father wasn’t wearing his bells,” Jyn said, staring into Cassian’s face. “When he died. Krennic had dressed him like a Wallmaker, and he wasn’t wearing his bells.” She turned her head with an effort. “Mogget, what happens to an Abhorsen’s bells, when they die far from home?”

 

Mogget pulled his head out of Bodhi’s abandoned tea-cup and cleaned his face fastidiously. “That depends. Often they pass in direct line from parent to child - or to niece, nephew, or second cousin twice removed, it doesn’t matter. The Blood always knows. But if an Abhorsen were to die alone, the bells would be retrieved by servants of the Blood: sometimes myself, more often others you do not know yet.  At the very least, an attempt would be made.”

 

“Krennic couldn’t have made his own bells,” Bodhi said. “Making Abhorsens’ bells is a lost art. Galen was trying to rediscover it.”

 

“But Krennic thought my father belonged to him,” Jyn said, remembering the Wallmaker tabard her father had worn to his death, the cuff, her father’s own bored words -  _ I have been widowed for the last ten years, and therefore can’t possibly object to being linked to my wife’s murderer. _ “He wouldn’t hesitate to take my father’s bells.”

 

She sat down hard in her chair, feeling breathless. Cassian’s hands loosened automatically, and one fell to rest on the back of the chair. “ _ Fuck _ !”

 

Captain Tindall looked taken aback.

 

“Please tell Major Gerrera his goddaughter is here, alive, and Abhorsen,” Colonel Raddus said. “And then - Abhorsen, am I to understand that the Eastern Light is about to come under attack by the Dead, a necromancer, and a weapon powerful enough to bring down the Wall?”

 

Jyn nodded, breathless. She should have thought. Her father had warned her, long before, in that first message embedded in the dragon desk.  _ He consorts with the Emperor’s necromancers and he’s more than half a necromancer himself. _

 

“There’s even a graveyard,” she said, stunned, and gasped in another gulp of air. Each new realisation hit her like a punch to the stomach. She knew the graveyard well; old enough that her Death sense troubled her little, a familiar cool feeling rather than a disturbing chill, she had often sat there on her way up Lington Hill from the sea, waiting for Saw’s bad leg, worse lungs, or deceptively casual discussions with local contacts. “From when the base was larger.”

 

There was a horrified silence.

 

“Well, damn the Admiralty,” Colonel Raddus said, almost cheerfully. “We’d better toddle along and save them from themselves.”

 

“Sir,” Captain Tindall said. “Corvere -”

 

“Damn Corvere too, they’ll know more than they want to about our line of work if the Wall falls with a necromancer so far south of the Perimeter.” Colonel Raddus rose from his chair. “Call an all-alarms, Tindall, and get me Transport, Signals and the RSM - now!”

  
  


 

Jyn, Cassian and Bodhi found themselves very quickly displaced from the dugout, and ushered away from the centre of the action to a broad empty space that must be a parade-ground, or as close as the Scouts and their businesslike mail ever got to one. Not far away Jyn saw something she identified as a motor pool, but surely nothing would - no. She looked up at the sky. The wind in the Kingdom had blown from the north, but here, now, it blew from the east. The cars would run.

 

She heard a familiar wheezing and coughing, and a canine yelp that she knew, brusquely hushed by the owner of a stamping, swaying, uneven tread. Jyn spun, and saw, from across the parade ground, a face that she knew and loved, and that now seemed far older than it had done a week ago. His prematurely whitened hair combed neatly into its frisé style, wearing his most respectable clothes, at least four weapons she could see and probably several she couldn’t, Gullet freshly washed and brushed and dancing at his feet -

 

“He looks so old,” Jyn whispered, heartbroken.

 

“He hasn’t got older,” Cassian said. “You’ve grown.” He shook her shoulder roughly. “You heard Colonel Raddus - he’s come here every day, looking to see if you were safe. Every day, Jyn.”

 

Jyn didn’t recall letting the thought into her head, but she took off running. The parade ground seemed both endless and minuscule; she skated to a halt before him, and put her arms gently around him. He seized her upper arms, and pressed his forehead against hers.

 

“Well, Abhorsen,” Saw said, in his familiar, cracked menthol-cigarette voice. “Well, Abhorsen!” He set her gently apart from him, and looked her up and down. “Look at you! The daughter Lyra wanted to raise! The heir Galen begged me to protect! I hope he was proud of you, at the end.”

 

“He told me he was,” Jyn sobbed, tears leaking from her eyes without her will. “He hugged me and told me I’d done what he couldn’t. Saw, I never wanted it to come to this, I thought I could just find him and have done -”

 

“Hush now.” He pulled her close. “Hush now. It’s not that simple. It’s never that simple. I taught you that.”

 

“I know,” Jyn wept, “I know.” She buried her face in his neck, and didn’t put any of her weight on him. “The things I’ve seen, Saw, I wish I could show you.” The libraries of the Clayr; the sunrise, from the high atmosphere. Abhorsen’s House; the streets and sea of Belisaere. All of it seemed to matter less than the death she had brushed against, and it all felt far more real and vivid to Jyn than this thin and finicky land under threat.

 

“Don’t worry about an old man,” Saw said gruffly. “I think I’ve seen a thing or two. I see you don’t hate that slick bastard from the Regency up north any more.”

 

“Cassian is not slick at all,” Jyn said, almost startled. “I mean, I don’t know what he is, but - I wouldn’t say he was slick.”

 

Saw set her away from him again, and looked her very hard in the eye. “He followed you all this way?”

 

Jyn nodded. “And when the Regency decided my father should be left to die, he didn’t go along with them; he decided I was right, and chose to come with me.”

 

“Is that so? Well. Maybe I see a use for him.” He wrapped an arm around Jyn’s shoulders and looked over the parade ground at Bodhi and Cassian, and Mogget, draped over Cassian’s shoulders now. “And will he fight?”

 

“That’s why he’s here.” Jyn wrapped an arm around Saw’s ribs and squeezed very gently. “I fought alongside him in Belisaere. I’m a stronger Charter mage than he is, but he’s better with a sword.”

 

“And what did you find to fight in Belisaere?” Saw demanded.

 

Jyn stiffened. “The Hish that killed my mother.”

 

Saw leaned away, and stared into her face.

 

“We killed them,” Jyn said, with difficulty, and then added, with still greater difficulty: “Krennic used them to keep my father captive.”

 

“Oh, Jyn,” Saw said, very quietly, and with a raw, rasping sincerity that almost hurt, “my child. You have become a warrior to be proud of.” He pulled her head gently towards his, pressing his forehead against hers. Their Charter marks flashed and flared. “ _ Abhorsen _ .”

 

Jyn took a deep breath, and let the name settle over her shoulders. It didn’t sound so bad in Saw’s mouth, full of pride.

 

“Eastern Light, hey?” Saw said, after a minute. “You might see me there.”

 

Jyn twitched. “How did you even find  _ out _ ?”

 

“I have my ways.”

 

“Saw, please, no. With your leg - and your lungs.  _ Saw _ .”

 

“I’ll go where I’m needed,” Saw said, and Jyn saw with despair that there was no changing his mind. “And you’re still only eighteen, Jyn. I won’t have you face Krennic alone.”

 

“I’m not alone!”

 

“No,” Saw said, solid and unmoveable. “You aren’t. You have me.” He squeezed her arm tightly. “With you or not - you will always have me.”

 

For some stupid reason, Jyn wanted to cry again. She forced the tears back, and didn’t think about how this, too, sounded like goodbye. Even if no harm came to either of them with what they were about to do, they would be separated by the Wall nearly every day of their remaining lives. “Saw -”

 

“Abhorsen!” shouted Captain Tindall, somewhere. “Abhorsen!”

 

“Go,” Saw said. “They’re calling for you.”


	21. Chapter 21

Jyn, Cassian, Bodhi and Mogget were bundled into the back of a large truck that also contained Colonel Raddus, a driver with a cigarette stuck behind his ear, and Captain Tindall. Captain Tindall seemed to have decided that Jyn was not safe to be let loose on Ancelstierre without supervision - either that or there was no room for him on the bench seat in front - because he sat in the back with them, watching uneasily while Bodhi worked on a large number of swords he seemed to have either borrowed or been offered, possibly with the connivance of the Regimental Sergeant Major. Bodhi had disdained a seat on the two long and uncomfortable benches in the back and was sitting on a folded-up greatcoat with his back to the bench seat, an unfamiliar look of focus in his eyes and the sword he was currently working on in his hands. Jyn thought it might be the same expression he got when he was flying a Paperwing. He was only etching the simplest marks into the steel - hardly more than scratches, but they glowed as he pushed familiar golden marks into them, marks for breaking and unbinding and burning. Every time the truck bumped, which was often, he muttered, but did not break his grip or stop in his work.

 

“Is it that simple?” Captain Tindall asked tentatively, when they were already onto the main road and accelerating, the road evening out. 

 

“What?” Bodhi said, laying a sword aside.

 

“Spelling a sword.”

 

“Well, I mean, that depends,” Bodhi said, blinking owlishly at him. “Jyn’s sword took Galen a year from start to finish. A master swordsmith might be able to do it as well in a couple of months. But Jyn’s sword is meant to last centuries. These spells will last weeks at best. They’re just meant to protect the young ones who haven’t had a chance to get anyone to spell a sword for them yet. They’re what I can do in the time we have.”

 

Captain Tindall glanced at Jyn. Jyn looked away, and Cassian nudged his shoulder against hers.

 

“What Bodhi’s not saying is that this takes a great deal of energy,” Cassian said smoothly. “You probably know that different Charter mages have different strengths? Creating magical objects needs extraordinary skill. I could do less than half of what Bodhi has set out to do.”

 

“Look, I’ll finish this, I’ll eat something, I’ll sleep, it’ll all be back to normal,” Bodhi said, now sounding irritated by the interruption. “Just… stop talking, I’m concentrating.”

 

_ Centuries _ , Jyn thought, and let her head hang down. Cassian’s hand covered hers on the bench, safely out of sight, and she leaned her weight into him very slightly.

 

Soon enough - Jyn didn’t know the make of the truck or its habits, and the sides were windowless, but the jolting and the yelping of an engine forced past its ideal speed suggested they were making very good time - they drew up in Bain High Street. It wasn’t particularly august, but it did contain the post office and a police station. Jyn stuck her head out of the canvas flaps at the back to confirm her guess, and saw all of these things, and a uniformed constable hurtling down the broad steps of the police station, a sergeant puffing after him. She pulled her head back in and announced this. 

 

“Not promising,” Captain Tindall said, frowning slightly, and climbed out of the back of the vehicle just as they heard voices at the front - trying to talk to Colonel Raddus and getting into an impressive muddle. Jyn shared a look with Cassian and followed him.

 

Bodhi barely even looked up. There was sweat at his temples; Jyn hoped he wasn’t pushing himself too hard.

 

Outside, the air was chill and the weather less bright than it had been. The High Street wasn’t empty - it never was - but it had taken on a frozen quality when the Army trucks pulled in that worsened when Jyn popped out of the back of the car dressed as an Abhorsen, and made for the pair of policeman. The constable was a very young probationary constable, but he was also a radio enthusiast charged with monitoring local emergency frequencies, and - though originally from Gullshire in the far south, by the slow rolling accent - he had been in the north long enough to know that funny business should be unhesitatingly laid in the hands of the Crossing Point Scouts. He had just bolted downstairs to tell his sergeant what he’d heard when the trucks (distinctive, in a northern town where most businesses still didn’t trust cargo or services to motor engines) had been heard wending their way through the town.

 

“And to think I just wanted a quiet word with your superintendent,” Colonel Raddus said grimly. “Tell the Abhorsen what you heard, lad.”

 

The constable darted Jyn a startled glance, and the sergeant saluted her. Jyn inclined her head and turned her eyes on the constable.

 

“It was a call out from the navy,” he said, “out at East Light. On the normal weather channel. They were warning of a fog from the north out at sea, rolling in fast. Sergeant Humphreys said to report any strange weather from the north -”

 

“You did exactly right,” Jyn said quickly, the hair on the back of her neck rising up. She turned to Colonel Raddus. “That must be him. Krennic. And we mustn’t go into the fog unprotected - we can probably spell everyone, if Cassian and I teach the spell to those who don’t already know if. That’s how Saw got… well.”

 

Captain Tindall’s quick, giveaway look over her shoulder told her she would see Saw’s ancient blue banger if she turned around. Jyn gritted her teeth and didn’t turn around. “I heard it was gas.”

 

“Fog is a gas,” Jyn replied. 

 

Sergeant Humphreys broke in quickly. “Sir, ma’am, do we have the bells rung? Will this spread beyond the navy base?”

 

“I don’t know,” Jyn said tightly, thinking of the Hish left loose in a building in central Belisaere, the Gore Crows flying free over the Kingdom. “Probably. Krennic doesn’t worry about collateral. Get everyone indoors.”

 

Colonel Raddus nodded abruptly. “Tell your superintendent full drill - and it’s not to be raised until full noon tomorrow, with quarantine until you hear from either Abhorsen or myself that the threat has been knocked on the head.”

 

Jyn’s feet were itching. “We have to go,” she said. “We’re still a good hour and a half away. If the fog is already offshore -”

 

“There was one more thing,” the constable said, “Abhorsen,” handling the word dubiously in his mouth. “They were calling for a ship to identify itself on the radio and it wasn’t answering.”

 

“What kind of a ship?” Jyn demanded. It was almost certainly the  _ Devastator _ , but what it looked like she had no idea. If it were just a fishing sloop, then perhaps they had time.

 

“Ah, uh, I don’t know, Abhorsen. And I don’t think they knew either. It was a very big ship under full sail. Red and gold.”

 

Jyn blinked. Not a fishing sloop, then. “I don’t know what that means, Colonel Raddus,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s a good sign.”

 

“The Dead can’t cross running water,” Colonel Raddus pointed out. “Surely…”

 

“There are ways,” Jyn said. The relevant pages from the Book of the Dead were unspooling in her mind’s eye. “They need grave dirt or other similar substances, and no-one in the Borderlands buries their dead, even if they have no Charter mage around. But Krennic trapped my father in June, and we’re now in October. He’s had time to make preparations.”

 

Colonel Raddus blew out a long breath. The sergeant looked frightened now, as well as the constable. 

 

“It’s all right,” Jyn said, knowing from Saw’s stories that panic was the most dangerous weapon an adversary could wield. “I am Abhorsen. Krennic’s not going anywhere, boat or no boat.”

 

The constable looked faintly reassured, and Colonel Raddus smiled, but the sergeant too clearly looked at her and saw a girl he might have called up Wyverley College’s headmistress to report truant a few months before. Jyn looked him dead in the eye and laid her hand very lightly on the pommel of her sword.

 

“Full drill,” she repeated slowly and authoritatively. “Until noon tomorrow. We’ll be back.”

 

It was a contemplative little group that went back to the truck, where Captain Tindall (who had temporarily disappeared) rejoined them with his hands full of food. Bodhi had fallen asleep and Cassian was very quiet, flicking over the pages of a book from his pack, but both jolted when Captain Tindall passed out sandwiches and water, and (after a quick look at Jyn) a tin of sardines for Mogget. Jyn thanked him quietly, and peeled open the tin for Mogget, who deigned to wake up and sniff at it.

 

“What  _ are _ these?” he said, causing Captain Tindall to drop his packet of sandwiches. 

 

“I said he wasn’t really a cat,” Jyn reminded Captain Tindall, and then turned back to Mogget. “Fish. Sardines. Captain Tindall brought them because he thought we might all be hungry.”

 

“‘S a good point,” Bodhi said, already halfway through his second sandwich. The swords had been bundled up again, his work complete. “Thank you.”

 

Captain Tindall, still looking a bit shaken, nodded politely. 

 

“There’s chatter on the radio,” Jyn said. “Fog out to sea, and a strange ship. A rigged sailing ship in red and gold.”

 

“Krennic,” Bodhi said, with absolute certainty. “But he’s not a very good weather-worker.”

 

“The fog is definitely there,” Tindall pointed out. “And moving against the previous direction of the wind.”

 

Bodhi shook his head impatiently, and swallowed the last bite of his sandwich. “So he must be carrying a prepared spell onboard ship. Either that or he has some kind of help.”

 

“What about the ship?” Cassian asked, his shoulder brushing against Jyn’s. Even here, he ate neatly, quick tidy bites and perfect manners. The Organas must have taught him a lord’s table manners, not knowing where life would take him - though neither of them could have predicted this strange turn of events. 

 

“I don’t know it.” Bodhi frowned at the crumbs on his lap and brushed them off. “You can’t bring a deep-water ship in as far as Wallmakers’ Town, remember?”

 

“My father called it the  _ Devastator _ ,” Jyn volunteered. “He said Krennic would catch the morning tide on it.”

 

“I have heard that name before,” Cassian admitted, careful, guarded. “But I didn’t know it was a ship.” He was silent for a moment. “A sailing ship in red and gold.”

 

“It sounds like one of the ships from Holehallow,” Bodhi volunteered, looking disconcerted. He shifted on the greatcoat he was seated on.

 

Mogget looked up from his crouch over the tin of sardines and deigned to speak. “No ships are missing from Holehallow,” he said. “The wards are old, and tied to Abhorsen’s House by many centuries’ bonds. They have not been violated. I would know.”

 

Captain Tindall looked increasingly puzzled, and glanced at Jyn for an explanation.

 

“The royal cemetery,” Jyn said. “The kings and queens of the Old Kingdom are buried in funerary ships.”

 

Captain Tindall went from puzzled to unnerved.

 

“But as Mogget just said,” Bodhi said, “it can’t be a real one.” His eyes narrowed, the craftsman coming to the fore. “And I’m certain it wouldn’t be seaworthy, anyway. The newest one is twenty years old and it’s been sitting in a sinkhole all that time.”

 

“But who would copy a funeral ship to go to war?” Captain Tindall said blankly.

 

“I don’t know,” Jyn countered. They were well and truly out of Bain; the truck had sped up and the engine was whining again. “Who would murder his best friend’s wife?”

 

“Krennic,” Bodhi muttered, spat on the baseboards of the truck, and then folded his arms and went to sleep. There were angry tight lines around his mouth anyway.

 

“Krennic,” Jyn echoed, and fidgeted with the wrapping of her sandwich. She leaned forward in her seat. “How far to the Eastern Light?”

 

“About another hour,” the driver answered, after a quick glance at Colonel Raddus.

 

“Will we be in time?” Captain Tindall asked, leaning forward likewise.

 

Jyn didn’t answer. Cassian rested his hand on his sword and looked at her. She stared out of the windscreen into the lowering grey clouds and tried to think of a reply.

 

“We don’t have a choice,” Cassian said, in the end, when the silence stretched too long.

  
  


They drove for another hour, each passing minute after the half-hour making Jyn more twitchy. The sky was leaden with clouds, though there was no fog to be seen, and the trucks coughed and revved their way through the Ancelstierran countryside without pause. Such a procession might have commanded attention, but the church bells were tolling as if for a funeral without cease, the Ancelstierran borderers’ signal to get indoors and stay indoors. Peering out the windscreen, Jyn saw shuttered houses and barricaded gates, and even - when they crossed a river - several people moored on a boat, mid-stream. 

 

Closer to the sea, Jyn might have expected that the weather would grow colder or stormier. It didn’t. They passed the last of the little churches, Saint-Marie-by-Forloth, and its single small bell echoed into the distance. Birds and animals had fled. They rose up the slope of the low Forloth Hills around the lochs, and then came to an abrupt, concertina-ing halt some way before the crest of the hill that sloped down to the sea and the dockyards, the naval base and the commandant’s house and the little graveyard Jyn had been worrying about for the last several hours. The trucks’ engines were now beginning to have serious trouble, but that was not why they stopped.

 

There was a man running down the hill. He had lost his white cap, but his sailor’s blue suit shone out clear and distinct, and so did his face, whey-coloured with terror.

 

Colonel Raddus cocked his revolver beneath the dashboard. “Live or dead?”

 

“Live,” Jyn said, “and afraid.”

 

Colonel Raddus swung out of the passenger’s door. “Halt, sailor!” he bawled, and the sailor fell over himself to stop running, tumbling to the gravelled road at Colonel Raddus’s feet, half-wheezing, half-sobbing his breath. Colonel Raddus flicked the safety catch back on and holstered his gun, and helped the sailor to his feet. Jyn, Cassian, Captain Tindall and Bodhi - woken from a surprisingly deep sleep by the jolt - scrambled out the back of the truck.

 

“Now then, lad,” Colonel Raddus said, steady and immovable, his jowly mottled face full of a sort of brisk kindness. “You’ve had a fright.”

 

“Sir,” the sailor gasped, coughing between his words. “Sir. Colonel.”

 

“Tell us what you saw,” Jyn said, trying to find the same kind of tone of command Colonel Raddus had, Saw’s unshakeable belief that his orders would be obeyed.

 

The sailor let out a high, thin wall of terror, and recoiled.

 

“Easy now,” Colonel Raddus said. “Easy now. This is Abhorsen. She’s come south to get us out of this mess. Start talking, sailor.”

 

“A ship,” the sailor gasped, and Jyn realised why his coughing was familiar; it sounded like Saw’s. Her heart sank for the man, who she knew would never breathe easy again with Ancelstierran treatment, and she began to pull the marks for a healing spell from her mind. “A ship. It came from the fog. And the fog is poison. It’s poison.”

 

“I know,” Jyn said. “I need to give you medicine to help with the cough, so your lungs can clear.” She moved towards him slowly and carefully. He shook and trembled, but did not run. “I’ll stand just behind you, all right? You don’t have to do anything.” 

 

“All right. Miss. Abhorsen. All right.” He closed his eyes; his face and shirt were streaked with terror-sweat. She sketched the marks behind his back and let them come to her fingers, and then laid her palm gently between his shoulder blades, watching soft gold fire sink through his shirt. He shuddered hard, but relaxed, and when he spoke, his voice was stronger, his breathing clearly improved.

 

“The ship,” he said. “It was a sailing ship. Huge. Wooden. Red and gold trim. Under sail, but… it didn’t look like she was moving with the wind. It was like the wind changed for her. She looked like, like a children’s story. With a lady on the figurehead, with long brown hair and closed eyes and a blue gown and flowers and a scroll and gold in her hands. And a name. I heard Paul read it out. Devastator.” He shook and wept. “And I’ve had the Sight from a child and I never seen much miss but I saw terrible things, terrible things rising from the ground, and a man from that ship going to the lighthouse, and I - I - I ran, miss, thought I could get to the alarm bell, but Petty Officer Freke didn’t believe me, and the fog come in and Paul… fell, and then the man pointed at him and rang a bell, and he rose up, and I ran. I ran.” 

 

He dropped his head into his hands and wailed.

 

“No shame in that,” Colonel Raddus said calmly. “You’ve brought us an extremely important message. Your shipmates may yet be saved.”

 

“I ran,” the man wept, apparently unable of thinking past this, traumatised.

 

“Corporal,” Colonel Raddus said, picking someone out of the transfixed crowd of Scouts behind them, “take this man to the rear, and have a decent driver remove him to safety - he's done what he can. Everyone steer clear of the crest; no need to announce our arrival.” 

 

“Everyone who knows the safe breathing spell should do it now,” Jyn added, as loudly as she could. “If you don’t know it and no-one is available to show you… come to me or Cassian or Bodhi.”

 

“We teach that one to all our most apt Charter mages,” Colonel Raddus said, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking grimly up the road. “Too many good men lost - or nearly lost. Like your godfather. Will that lad be all right?”

 

Jyn pressed her lips together and shrugged. She couldn’t be sure.

 

“And what was he saying about a ship?”

 

“I know,” Bodhi said, in an authoritative voice designed not to carry, and all at once Jyn remembered again how good a Wallmaker he was, and felt freshly murderous towards Draven for having left him petrified and stumbling over the simplest words. “It’s a copy of Queen Padmé’s funeral ship.”

 

Both Captain Tindall and Colonel Raddus stared at him.

 

Cassian shifted from foot to foot almost imperceptibly, clearly - to Jyn’s eyes - desperately unnerved. He nodded slightly. “Lord Bail had a copy of the image used for the prow of the ship. She was buried in a dress the colour of the Sea of Saere, with white flowers in her hair, and the gold must be a Charter spell. It’s traditional to depict queens and kings with something they were known for and the Charter. Queen Padmé was a noted legislator. The scroll represents her laws.”

 

Bodhi nodded. “I visited the Wallmakers with my mother before I was apprenticed - they were working on the figurehead then. And monarchs’ funerary ships are always red and gold.”

 

“Are you telling me there is a  _ dead queen  _ on that thing?” Colonel Raddus demanded, no doubt envisioning attempts to cut down an embalmed lady with a crown and insatiable thirst for Life.

 

“No,” Bodhi said, scowling reproachfully at him. “We said earlier. The real thing wouldn’t be seaworthy and it must be still in Holehallow. I promise you, that place is covered in wards and well-cared-for. So the question isn’t if this is real - it’s who is morbid and blasphemous enough to make a  _ copy _ ?”

 

“Krennic,” Jyn muttered, glaring at the horizon.

 

“But why would he care?” Bodhi rubbed his temples. “It makes no sense.”

 

“Is it directly relevant to the problem at hand?” Colonel Raddus enquired, with deceptive patience.

 

“It might not be,” Bodhi said, unhelpfully. “Or it might be about to land us all with a really unpleasant surprise we don’t know about yet.”

 

“Welcome to the Army, Mr Rook,” Captain Tindall said, and invited them all with a gesture to notice the short line of men who absolutely couldn’t spell themselves waiting for help.

 

Jyn called for the Charter, and with the Wall a distinct dark line on the horizon and a good north breeze blowing, it came.


	22. Chapter 22

A short while later Jyn was startled by a familiar harsh cry from over the crest of the hill. She clamped down on a Charter mark which tried to wriggle free in her distraction, and flung the net of her protection over a frightened private trying hard to keep his nerve. He visibly breathed freer. The death spell was carried in the fog blanketing the lower slopes and shoreline, but the mere scent of it choked and cloyed.

 

“That’s a bell,” he said. “Isn’t it. Ma’am. A necromancer’s bell.”

 

“Yes,” Jyn said. “But I have seven.” It was a stupid quip, but it made his eyes brighten a bit, and Colonel Raddus - engaged with the lighting of pitch torches - let out an approving bark of laughter. She gave the private a cocky grin and a wink, and ran up to the crest of the hill. Captain Tindall was already there, crouched behind a shrub and staring over it with binoculars; Cassian knelt next to him, sword drawn.

 

“I can’t see what he’s doing,” Captain Tindall said. “This damned fog.”

 

“He’s raising the Dead from the old naval graveyard,” Jyn said savagely, drawing Ranna. “We can stop worrying about whether or not he knows we’re here. There are at least forty graves there and some of them are double depths. If I don’t stop him now we’ll have fifty Dead Hands on our… well.” 

 

She stared down into the fog, seeing nothing but swirling mist and sensing the spirits of the unquiet dead emerging. The naval graveyard hadn’t been regularly used for years; most of the admirals and senior officers who had once wanted to be buried there now opted to be buried at sea. But skeletons animated by the Dead made for a profoundly unappealing prospect. She focused on their stirring, clawing up through the grave soil, and let Ranna swing in a slow, even circle.

 

_ Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep _ . She didn’t force her will on them, but surrounded them with it, inviting them inexorably to lay down their stolen bodies and rest. Several spirits slipped from the grip of the necromancer, back into the waters of Death, and she knew it had not gone unnoticed when the raucous wall of Mosrael sounded once more, louder. A guttural groan floated in the distance, accompanied by a spine-chilling rattle; Cassian and Captain Tindall had abandoned stealth and stood at her shoulders, swords drawn, the Charter marks on both shining in the false saucepan-lid dimness of the autumn afternoon. 

 

Two could play at that game. She drew Saraneth from its place, a second bell that was reliable in an Abhorsen’s hands, felt the rhythm of Ranna’s chiming, and swung Saraneth in concert, a stern warning to those who would not lie still. They both cut strangely across Mosrael, fighting its call, the discordance grating over Jyn’s teeth. She forced herself to hold, pushing insistently against the spirits still trying to fight through to Life, and nearly overbalanced when Mosrael cut out. She rang for a few seconds longer, until she was almost confident the spirits had slipped away, and then silenced her bells and replaced them.

 

“He must know I’m here now,” she said to the men grouped around her, staring down into the fog which coated the road below the crest. “If he took my father’s bells, there’s no other Abhorsen it can be. There’s nothing to be gained by secrecy.”

 

The lighthouse stood proud of the fog, as did some of the lit buildings, moving figures visible in their upper windows. The death ship of Queen Padmé - if that was truly what it was - rose from it as if sailing on clouds, silent and eerie among the strange stillness of the fog and the occasional screams.

 

“Very well,” Colonel Raddus said, and raised his voice. “The vehicles will go no further. Abandon them. Ullrick’s squad, form up on Mr Rook and Captain Tindall - and the cat.”

 

“Especially the cat,” Cassian murmured into Jyn’s ear. She grinned, feeling tense and high-strung the way she had before the Hish entered the office in the Belisaere consulate. 

 

Colonel Raddus ignored them. “You will follow Mr Rook’s orders to disable the source of this fog. Allen’s squad, form up on the Abhorsen and Captain Andor. Make for the lighthouse. Obey the Abhorsen’s orders without question. Rest of the company to me; let’s  rescue the Navy from this wretched mess they’re in! Forward!”

 

Almost from the moment he had begun to speak, men had begun to hurry and run, stamping feet and calling orders and purposeful movement. Strings of Charter marks hung around their throats and chests, burning brightly. Jyn saw them and thought of Saw, and hoped he had stayed behind in Bain, to raise the alarm or sort out some stupid civilians. She feared it would be a forlorn hope.

 

Bodhi came up the road with his heavily-spelled long dagger in hand, vambraces and armoured jerkin out in the open, dark eyes dangerous and jaw set. Mogget was riding on his shoulder, saturnine with amusement, and it was his eyes that Jyn met when she wished Bodhi good luck.

 

“Aren’t you going to wish me good luck, Abhorsen?” Mogget taunted. “Or give me orders?”

 

“You don’t want one and would wriggle out of the other,” Jyn retorted. “Do what you can to help Bodhi. Please.” She thought for a split second, and added “Without loosing your collar.”

 

Mogget cackled, which was so unnerving Bodhi reared back and Captain Tindall made a quite involuntary face. “Lyra’s daughter! Untrusting. But not, I think, unkind. Well, well, we’ll see, Abhorsen. Enjoy your vengeance.”

 

“This isn’t about that,” Jyn snapped, but there was a squad of men behind her waiting for her orders, and there was no time for anything else.

 

Cassian took up a pitch torch in one hand. Jyn took up Saraneth once more. She looked at the men she had been given to command and  _ knew _ them - knew their fears and wishes, knew their absolute reliance on her. Their eyes lit on her face like lanterns, like mariners with nothing but a compass praying for true north.

 

If this was what it like to be Abhorsen, it felt like coming home - up to and including the slow cold ebb and flow of death about her, a river not present lapping at her feet with the steady inevitability of the tide.

 

“Let’s go,” she said, and led the march into the blank chill of Krennic’s death fog. Cassian fell into step beside her; Bodhi led his men half a step behind, talking softly to Captain Tindall with an authority that belied the way his voice had once stuttered when he spoke of his mission. She could hear him making plans, describing weaknesses. She could hear Cassian’s steady breath, and further behind, she could hear Colonel Raddus telling the Regimental Sergeant Major to give the order to fix bayonets and close ranks. She could not hear the swaying stamp of Saw’s tread, the rasp of his breath, and she took comfort from that. She might not lose one parent to Krennic.

 

The mist swallowed Jyn up, and the flames burned beside her, and she burned, too, slow-swelling rage rising up within her.

 

_ I am Abhorsen _ , she thought, and for the first time it didn’t feel like a rote explanation, a dreaded litany.  _ And I will not suffer the Dead to rise. _


	23. Chapter 23

 

Raddus knew old Gerrera would be there, the same way he’d known - without having to look or think - that there was an extra passenger in one of the trucks, and that Gerrera would not be waiting passively at home for news of his goddaughter, and that the Abhorsen didn’t know he was here. He wasn’t surprised to hear those familiar stamping footsteps behind him, once the Abhorsen had forged forward into the fog with that quicksilver swordsman at her right hand and a squad of his best men behind her, and Tindall had followed on with the craftsman-mage and battle-tested Scouts.

 

“She would be furious if she knew you were here,” Raddus said, without looking round. “You know as well as I do - better than she does - that going into that is signing your death warrant.”

 

Gerrera was silent for a moment. Then he said: “You would do the same, for your daughter.”

 

Raddus caught himself up on a sigh, and nodded to the major looking to him for the signal. Raddus raised his hand and chopped it down into the air, and they began their steady forward march, spellfire and drawn swords gleaming. Gerrera’s dog, its ugly barrel chest wrapped in Charter marks, growled and snapped at the mist.

 

“You never forgave Galen Erso, did you?” Raddus asked. 

 

Gerrera’s silence lasted longer this time, and not purely because he needed to save his breath. 

 

“No,” Gerrera said finally. “Not for Lyra. Not for Jyn.” A hesitant pause that might just have been a breath, and then a final gruff, low addition. “Or for the rest.”

 

The first death rattles and ululations close enough to hear began ahead, a chilling counterpoint to the steady tramp of the men’s feet and the distant yells of the navy, out of their depth; the Abhorsen had found the Dead, and her bells rang out. Gerrera drew a sword from his side, and its spells shone in the fog, deeply inlaid in the Ancelstierran steel by a master craftsman.

 

Raddus knew that last for a fact. He had watched Galen Erso do it, fifteen years ago, and joke that he needed Gerrera alive, to keep him out of trouble in a strange land. Gerrera had laughed, and crossed the Wall into the Kingdom with Galen, and crossed back weeks later to spend hours closeted with old General Ackbar.

 

Gerrera’s laughter, Raddus remembered, died with the news of Lyra Erso’s loss. And when Galen Erso had brought little Jyn to school at Wyverley and refused to take her home, Gerrera had ceased to cross the Wall.

 

“Well then,” Raddus said, and broke off as a cluster of shapes shambled out of the fog, some already alight and shrieking. “Fire!” he shouted, and golden light arced over his head to splash over the rotting flesh of the Dead.

 

By his side, Gerrera snarled the old familiar incantation - _anet-calew-ferhan_ , beams of silver light too bright to look at bursting from three outstretched fingertips, the revenants ahead of them howling and recoiling for a few precious moments, enough to raise a rough cheer from the Scouts. Raddus yelled himself, hoping the noise would reach all the way down to the naval dockyards and lift the hearts of any still living there. He glanced sideways, expecting to see Gerrera grinning like a shark.

 

He was not. His face was set and hard, his eyes fixed forward, down into the fog-blunted chaos where the Abhorsen had gone. The lighthouse rose ivory-pale in the distance, angled off away from their own goal, and Raddus could see Tindall and Rook's golden fire bursting through massed ranks of Dead Hands.

 

Well, time to make a lot of noise, rescue the navy, and possibly, if they were very lucky, get out with their lives.

 

"Company!" Colonel Raddus shouted. "Advance!"

 

***

 

Tindall wasn't sure if this was how men from the Old Kingdom typically fought, or if Rook was unusual, but he'd never seen Charter magic wielded like this. The platoon following the Abhorsen and her sworn swordsman - or friend, or whatever he was - split off, heading inexorably for the lighthouse and whatever murderous machine this bastard had cooked up, and as the sound of the bells moved further away their deterrent effect on the Dead deteriorated. Tindall braced himself for deaths as the Hands charged them, but Rook cried aloud and coils of rope rose from the ground and curled about twisted bodies, dragging them to the ground. Tindall seized the moment and hacked at them, sparks flying from his spelled sword, but then Rook cast a few marks into the air from the tip of one of those long knives and the bodies burst into flames. Tindall cut down a Hand approaching from behind, and his men beat others to the ground and destroyed them, but Rook was everywhere, those dark eyes sharp as obsidian and golden fire spilling from his fingers, the knives slashing at tendons and grasping, deformed wrists. Those elegant hands had trembled, in the truck, once the swords had been hastily spelled and set aside, and Rook's sleep had been uneasy, if the way he had twitched and frowned indicated anything. But he showed no signs of fear now; only a lack of concern for his own skin. It was obvious he'd never been taught to watch his back. And every reckless step took them closer to the red and gold ship now looming before them.

 

Tindall minded Rook's blind spots and watched out for his men. They'd lost only three so far, two in the initial onslaught, before Colonel Raddus had charged the dockyards with his larger force, but every metre closer to the ship was a metre closer to a neat little mousehole where they might all be trapped and killed. And Tindall preferred not to reflect on the behaviour of the cat thing, which kept running around people's feet, hacking at some Dead Hands with claws that were too long and tripping others into bayonets, swords or spells. He hoped it really was a friend, and that the Abhorsen's orders would hold.

 

At the base of the gangplank Rook halted, staring up at the ship with a calculating look in his eyes. This close, Tindall could see that there were… things, made of twisted shadow and moving as rags on a washing line might have done, had there been any wind. If he listened closely, he could hear despairing voices on the edge of audible sound, somehow still persisting despite the yells and clashes and screaming, and if he looked hard enough he could see glimpses of unformed faces among the flickering shadows. And there was a thick column of fog on the poop deck, separate from the general miasma. It swayed and blurred slightly, hard to look at. The smell of Free Magic was so thick Tindall kept thinking he was choking, and touching the bands of Charter marks protecting his lungs reflexively. They still shone bright and strong, but he had never worn them this long before, and couldn't predict how much longer they would last.

 

“Are those hostile?” Tindall said, pointing at the rags.

 

“What nasty work,” said the cat, sounding worryingly impressed. Rook flinched and shook his head from side to side.

 

"Galen told me things like these were… possible. They're not Dead," Rook said, through half-bared teeth. "They're… sort of sendings. Probably made of pieces of spirit, but they likely won't attack us, or they would have done already. They're there to sail the ship."

 

"How do you know they're -"

 

"I recognize them." Rook grimaced painfully, and shuddered. "I knew them."

 

Tindall swallowed a gasp and coughed instead.

 

"Whichever sorcerer is weaving the fog, they're back there." Bodhi gesticulated with his knives at the blurring shape of fog. "I'll go for them. There are probably other humans onboard, to manage the ship or reinforce Krennic or - shit, just make him look important. Krennic must not trust them or want to waste time keeping the Dead off them. But they'll come out to defend the ship, so - so - stop them."

 

"Stop them," Tindall repeated. His men had clustered up behind him, turned outwards in a sort of protective hedgehog formation, and the Dead were presently ignoring them in favour of ripping chunks out of Colonel Raddus's men, who weren’t backed by the sea. The base was now on fire, and Tindall didn't know who’d set it.

 

Rook swallowed hard, and Tindall remembered that he had once been part of this Wallmaker group, before defecting to support Miss Erso - the Abhorsen. That the people who had come here to kill and destroy had once been Rook’s comrades, before he had shown himself the better man. “You’ll probably have to kill them, captain.” 

 

“Noted, Mr Rook.” Tindall resettled his grip on his sword, and glanced behind him. “Corporal Anshy, Private Mallister, when we get to the top of the gangplank I want you to hold it. If the Dead come, burn it down, kick it down, whatever you have to do. We can swim and they can’t. The rest of you men, with me.”

  
Rook drew Charter marks in the air before him with his knives, and advanced slowly behind a small buckler of glowing golden fire. His boots rang on the gangplank, and the cat Mogget followed after him, prowling as if after an especially juicy mouse. Tindall drew a few Charter marks into his own hand, raised his sword, and followed them both. 

 

Onboard, the silence was almost eerie: the sound from the dockyard battle seemed to have seeped away into a dull and distant roar overpowered by the creaking and soft movement of the ship at the dock, creating a strange, isolated atmosphere, heavy and bereaved. Tindall muttered to Sergeant Mulcahey and the men spread out across the deck, barring hatches and doors, placing spells of sealing where they might stick, preparing grenades that might not fire of their own accord but would make a nasty surprise for anyone down there with fire or a Charter-spell that gave off heat. They gave the rags that had been people a wide berth, and Tindall hoped he was imagining things when he saw the trailing, fluttering edges reach yearningly towards his men.

 

Rook stalked towards the blurring fog on the poop deck, still holding the spell before him on the points of his knives, and Tindall hurried after him; just when he thought the mage was about to walk headfirst into the fog, Rook threw the spell forward. It shot into the fog with an audible hiss and then exploded, burning off part of the fog, enough to reveal a mechanism that flickered malevolently with white fire and a man in late middle age, wearing grey with a golden trowel pinned to his chest. With his greying blondish hair, small moustache, and very correct bearing, he could have been any retired officer of middling quality that Tindall knew; except that his forehead bore a brand that looked as if it had been carved deeply into his flesh, obliterating the Charter mark that must once have been there.

 

“Ozzel,” Rook said flatly. 

 

“Traitor,” Ozzel replied, eyes glittering, and raised his hands as if he too had a spell in reserve.

 

“How very dramatic,” Mogget said, sauntering up the steps to the poop deck as if this were a pleasant Saturday evening. “Does Free Magic rot your sense of taste, as well as your earthly flesh?” 

 

“The Mogget,” Ozzel breathed, giving back a step, and then his eyes narrowed and he stopped. “The Abhorsen is dead. He can’t protect you from us, creature.”

 

“Stupid as well as gaudy,” Mogget sighed, sniffing at the apparatus, sneezing, and then peeing on it thoughtfully. Rook watched him, frozen, and Tindall gestured quickly to his men to take cover. “The Abhorsen lives. Of course. They come in pairs, you idiot.”

 

“Stop that!” Ozzel exclaimed, turning his spell on Mogget instead of Rook, and while Mogget yowled like he’d been hit with water and reappeared several metres away, the only real effect was that Rook took advantage of Ozzel’s distraction to throw one of his two knives, and caught him solidly in the shoulder. Ozzel screamed, twisting back and staggering, one hand instinctively going to his shoulder and his eyes suddenly burning with blue-hot flame. Rook was knitting together another net of marks; to buy him time, Tindall bowled his own spell, overarm and as hard as he could manage it, aiming directly for Ozzel’s chest. It splashed on the man’s centre mass like hot caramel, burning his clothes and skin and drawing another howl from him, as the blurring fog dissipated further, like Ozzel had lost his grip on it.

 

“I’ll take the sorceror,” Rook yelled, net of marks clutched in his free hand, and hurtled up the stairs like he was trying to beat a world record, as Ozzel’s face twisted until it was something less than human. “Break the machine!”

 

Tindall signalled to Sergeant Mulcahey, the best of the other Charter mages with them, to take some men and back Rook up, or he would be dead before they got close to getting off the ship. He grabbed a couple of men for his own and bolted for the other staircase, too tired to risk a shield spell. Belowdecks, the passengers Rook had mentioned as a possibility had clearly woken up to the threat that had boarded, and Tindall could now hear noise and thumping and gurgling screams accompanying the distinctive sound of a grenade that had just been too closely inspected for its own good. He prayed that they wouldn’t be stuck with any hostiles in addition to the blood-mad bastard that Rook was now fighting with nothing more than a single long knife and those incredible fluid spells, and touched his own chest for reassurance. None of his men were coughing yet - or at least, not where he could hear them. 

 

He reached the machine, a hellish concoction that looked like nothing so much as an electrical transformer box with a pair of kitchen scales and a funnel on top, and reached out to wrench it apart. His hands blistered under the heat, and he swore furiously and snatched them back. He pulled a knife from his belt and tried to jimmy it open, but all that accomplished was a jet of crackling lightning that struck a private in the ribs and blew him across the poop deck, where he landed next to the halves of a twitching body that had once been one of Tindall’s best men.

 

“Rook!” Tindall screamed. “How do we break this thing?”

  
  
Rook was dancing out of the way of the sorceror, dripping with sweat, clearly off-balance without his second knife and with people to protect. He had a thousand small burns pockmarking his skin and clothes, and none of the Ancelstierrans were in any better shape. Ozzel had no such constraints; he didn’t even seem to care about the knife sticking out of his back, even as the pool of blood grew. 

 

“Water!” Rook howled back, as Sergeant Mulcahey darted in to catch a blow on his sword and turn it aside. “Try water!”

 

Ozzel turned on them, suddenly seeming to take them seriously as a threat, and Tindall threw himself to the floor as a wave of blisteringly hot air and bitter smoke rolled over him. He coughed and choked hopelessly, and scrambled to his feet with the strength of panic, stuffing his hand into his sleeve and trying it against the metal of the machine. It wasn’t unbearable. 

 

“Here,” he shouted to his men, “here, help me lift it,” and between three of them they heaved the thing up into the air and staggered with it across the poop deck. Ozzel pursued them, but Bodhi was there, wrenching the knife from his back and slashing a spell through the air as Mogget tripped and clawed at the sorceror, and one of Tindall’s men was caught by white fire and spun around screaming to ash, but as he did so Tindall roared “ _Push_ ,” and the machine fell from their blistered hands over the rail into the sea. It struck water and shrieked like nails on the world’s most enormous chalkboard, the sea boiling eerily and the yelling from belowdecks increasing.

 

Ozzel charged them, and Tindall dove out of the way; Sergeant Mulcahey ran Ozzel through with a sword that melted to nothing as it passed through Ozzel’s body and dropped the hilt with a shout, and as Ozzel choked and gasped, eyes going wide and flat and dead, Rook ran forward and heaved him over the rail to the sea.

 

The fog began to dissipate. Tindall took a deep breath, and touched his still-there bands of Charter marks, and looked out over to the barracks, which were still burning. There was blood on the ship’s deck and some of the hatches and doors had been resealed; Tindall wondered how many of the passengers had got free. The black rags continued to flutter in the sea breeze.

 

“I’d like to see him try coming back from the dead surrounded by seawater,” Rook said, breathlessly. Some of his long hair had been singed off, and he looked ashen under his brown complexion, almost swaying with exhaustion. He’d used four or five times the Charter magic Tindall could have dreamed of producing. “Sorry about your sword, sergeant, I’ll make you another one.”

  
  
“Don’t mind if you do, Mr Rook,” Sergeant Mulcahey said, but he was not looking at his men, or the ship, or the still-bubbling sea, or the ongoing battle at the dockyards. He was staring up at the lighthouse. “What the hell is the Abhorsen doing up there?”

 

Tindall followed his gaze, and stared himself. The top of the lighthouse was pulsing with that familiar blue-white light. He saw three figures silhouetted darkly against it, two clustered together, one stalking forward, and then the light seemed to wobble, and “Get down!” Rook screamed, and they all dropped to the deck.

 

It was like being just outside the blast radius of a howitzer - a wave of pressure, radiating outwards, rolling through your bones with the high-pitched rage of shattering glass. Tindall covered his ears and prayed he wouldn’t burst into flame, and then saw from his limited field of vision Rook, leaping to his feet.

 

“No!” Rook cried, terror and grief in his voice. “Jyn! Cassian! No!”

 

Tindall looked up so fast he wrenched every muscle in his neck. With the fog threading away into nothing, he could clearly see those three figures, falling from the lighthouse, falling, five floors or more to unforgiving tarmac.

 

“ _Shit_ ,” he breathed. 


	24. Chapter 24

The path to the lighthouse was littered with Dead Hands. Jyn carved her way through them, bells and sword rising and falling, Cassian at her shoulder and the Scouts following her like some kind of saint and virago. The witch-lights of pitch flickered in the fog, burning less steadily than the chains of golden marks about necks and chests or the flash of light on steel, and Jyn felt Death all around her as she heard the cries of the living and the howls of the Dead rise, and ahead of her that whitewashed lighthouse loomed, as silent and implacable as marble. 

 

There was a light at the top. It was so fierce a white that the scent of metal crept into Jyn’s nostrils.

 

The metal staircase spiralled, broad enough that Jyn was able to wield her sword with relative ease, especially once she switched it from her left hand to her right. It was almost disturbingly empty; she ordered several of the men to bar the wooden door and secure it, so that no Hands could come to any call of Krennic’s. She knew he was above. She could almost hear him.

 

He didn’t have his pet Hish any more: Jyn wondered if he knew they had been killed in Belisaere. He did have a construct or two, Shadow Hands that Jyn banished with little more than force of will and a couple of swings of Kibeth once Cassian had pinned them with his sword, and a Free Magic creature that stunk of rotten pork and killed a Scout before Jyn beheaded it, Cassian cut it in half, and a white-faced lieutenant hammered a pitch torch down its throat. The pitch torch exploded into full flame, badly burning the lieutenant’s hand and wringing a piercing scream from him, but the creature fell apart, nothing but fouled pig meat left behind on the black metal grating that made up the floor.

 

“Go downstairs, get your medic to look at that,” Jyn snapped, breathing hard but calmer than she’d ever been, calm as she could only be when she was furious, teeth bared, the snapping end of a loosed electric cable ready to lash out. 

 

“Abhorsen,” the lieutenant tried. “There’s only four of us here, you’ll only have two -”

 

“Go,” Cassian snarled, glowering at him. Jyn hardly noticed. Her eyes were focused on the last stair, the only one that led to a solid-floored room, and its heavy door. Which was closed, and - Jyn darted up and tried the handle - locked. She backed off, trying to think of a spell that would blow in a solid metal door, and failed; she paced, frantic, panther-like.

 

“Begging your pardon, Abhorsen,” said one of the two remaining men, and retrieved from his rucksack something that looked even to Jyn’s untrained eye like serious explosives. Cassian eyeballed it like it might bite. “But this should do the job.”   
  


It did the job and then some. They retreated down two floors to give it space to work and huddled against the thick stone wall, Cassian shielding Jyn with his broader shoulders and a sort of automatic protectiveness she just leant into. Neither the dust nor the brain-rattling shockwaves had dissipated by the time Jyn leapt to her feet and charged recklessly up the two floors of steps, plus the final staircase, Cassian close on her heels and the Ancelstierran soldiers not far behind.

 

The door had buckled open. Jyn crashed through it, and saw immediately that Krennic had been blown across the room and through a door onto the gantry and several of the lighthouse’s windows had been blasted out. For a moment she hoped the explosives had ended it, but she hadn’t felt the cool touch of his death, and she could now see him getting painfully to his feet. Worse, the machine that had started this all was still intact - it had clearly been shifted across the floor by the blast, scraping the paint, but its progress had been stopped by the curve of a wall. Blue-white light collected in the dish of the focussing mirrors Galen Erso had once designed for protection,  and the scent of white-hot metal was so thick in Jyn’s mouth that she almost gagged on it. She struck desperately at the mirrors, looking for the angle to break it that her father had described, and it tipped and so nearly spilled white fire over her that Cassian yelled and pulled her out of the way.

 

“Abhorsen!” Krennic shouted, coming through the lighthouse door with his hands wreathed in flame, his cry almost a question rather than anything else.

 

There were a thousand clever things Jyn could have shouted in reply. She could think of none of them. She howled with incoherent rage, dropped her sword, seized the back of the large silvered concave mirror, and fought to tip it over in Krennic’s direction. After a split second Cassian joined her, and the crackling, choking, burning Free Magic screeched on a level not audible by normal human hearing as Krennic cried out and threw the fire in his hands at them.

 

Jyn and Cassian forced the mirror over, its balance tipping out of their hands at last, and the world exploded into a glare so powerful Jyn thought she was blinded and knew only later that she was falling, Cassian close by. 

 

_ I saw you _ , she remembered Baze saying, in a sudden bright flash,  _ surrounded by bright light _ -

 

“ _Mogget_ ,” she screamed, the name whipped away from her in the wind, and there was an answering roar and a sudden strange slowing to her fall so that when she hit the ground she was bruised and wounded, all the breath knocked out of her, but not killed. She drew in a gasping gallon of air and scrambled to her knees, staggering as fast as she could to where Cassian had fallen, near her sword lying on the tarmac, on his back, his head lolling and his face slack with unconsciousness, but not - her fingers plucked at his clothes and she felt panic well up until she found a pulse and almost sobbed with relief, clutching him to her - and then -

 

“Abhorsen,” someone cried, and then a deeper, hacking, wheezing shout - 

 

“Jyn! Jyn,  _ Krennic _ !”

 

Jyn barely had time to recognise Saw’s voice, or the way he pitched and fell to his knees, the Charter marks around his already badly damaged chest wavering and fading lethally. She felt the light of him flicker, the cold wind taking him from her, and she choked on her sobbing breath as she followed his last order, followed his wavering hand, to hear an unfamiliar shriek of pure Free Magic, and see Krennic, winging his way into the sky on the back of a gleaming dragon with blood-red scales.

 

Jyn let out a scream of rage and grief, and scrambled inelegantly for her sword. She seized it, and stabbed the air with it, wishing she could put it through Krennic’s traitorous heart, and crying instead the spell she had used in Belisaere, not three days before.

 

Either her bereaved strength or her spelled sword lent her a power she would not otherwise have had. The dragon roared and turned on her, but before it could do more than twist in the air it began to fly apart from scales to claws, and Jyn stood and watched and wept as it turned to gas and smoke, just fog among more fog, and Krennic fell.

 

It didn’t feel like a victory. It didn’t feel like any kind of relief. Everyone she had tried to save from him was gone, even at the very last moment of his life, and Jyn wanted to fall to the floor and tear at her hair and wail. But Abhorsen was not finished, and it was Abhorsen that pushed Jyn’s steps forward now.

 

Krennic had fallen onto a heavy stone and concrete bank that protected the harbour when the dragon had disintegrated; she’d heard his scream come to an end, and she almost believed that that was it, but - but.

 

He’d taken her father’s bells. He was necromancer enough to know how to use them, and a Free Magic Adept besides. For such a one, Death might not be the end. 

 

The fog was slowly dissipating, and the faintest gleam of autumn sun showed through the heavy clouds. Dead Hands were still fighting, though not close to where she and Cassian had fallen, and Bodhi and Captain Tindall had fled that ship like they thought it would swallow them up. But all Jyn could see was Krennic’s body lying on flat stone the colour of northern shale. 

 

“Watch over Captain Andor,” she said to the remains of her squad of men, who had escaped the heavily-damaged lighthouse with crumbling concrete on their heels and now collected around her and Cassian’s fallen body, looking dazed and scared. “I’ll take Krennic.”   


  
None of them argued with her. She ran towards Krennic’s sprawled corpse, and checked its vital signs; no heartbeat, no breathing, no sign of anything sinister about his body besides its lifelessness. Perhaps a week ago she would have been reassured, but now she just felt cold and jagged, all of her focussed on a single goal with the absoluteness of a hunting hawk.

 

She stood over Krennic, looking down at the scorched grey cloak, the fine gold embroidery of his tunic, the self-consciously elaborate new bandolier that had never held her father’s bells before. She switched her sword from her right hand to her left, drew Saraneth, and stepped across the boundary between Life and Death. She felt the ice forming on her lashes as she left the waking world.

 

The barrier was finer than worn silk here, with so much death in the air; like stepping through a wisp of cloud. The river yanked hard at her feet, and she held her balance, all her senses roaming through the deceptively soft grey air of this stretch of water. Spirits kept slipping through the barrier around her, most of them either weak or ready to lay aside mortal clothing and passing quickly on, but there was one which felt malign, and… Jyn poked around in her immediate vicinity… linked to something. Something that felt the way Krennic’s oily voice had sounded, not shocked and angry in the lighthouse, but urbane and poisonous in her uneasy childhood dreams. 

 

“The bastard,” Jyn muttered, lifting the edge of a fine thread from the water. It looked like he’d planned to retain a link to his body and keep himself anchored to Life that way, Greater Dead or not, but he was far weaker than he must have hoped to be before attempting that procedure, and also somewhat embarrassed for allies to carry his body off to a safe place… supposing the Crossing Point Scouts could handle whatever was on Queen Padmé’s death ship, if anything. Jyn hadn’t sensed any other major players, and after the events of the last week, her ear for Free Magic was so fine that the scent of a burst lightbulb would probably have made her draw her sword.

 

Well, Jyn would take no risks. She cut Krennic’s link with a swipe of the sword that Galen had made her, and in the same moment rang Saraneth in a double swing that echoed through the waters before the First Gate. 

 

“Rise, Orson Krennic,” she said. “Rise and do nothing.”

 

Krennic rose from the water. He was taller than her, and plainly he had had more than a little acquaintance with Death before this meeting; he didn’t have the blank, flat affect worn by those who had died without those preparations.

 

“We meet again,” he said.

 

He could also speak, which was a source of irritation Jyn hadn’t banked upon, but which saved her a spell.

 

“I don’t need your words,” she told him. “Your excuses. Your lies.”

 

“When my lord arises from the shadows, you will be cast down and ground up for spell ingredients, you impudent  _ brat _ .”

 

Jyn’s laughter burst from her chest like a wild thing, bright and real. It left a greater stillness in the air than any of the bells she’d ever rung here had, and she savoured the look of disgust on Krennic’s face.

  
“Lyra,” he hissed, which inspired Jyn to sheathe her sword long enough to pull Lyra’s medallion from the inside of her shirt. Krennic’s eyes rested on it with a hatred that made Jyn feel dangerously triumphant. “At least you look like Galen.”

 

“Congratulations to me,” Jyn said, with heavy sarcasm, the new brightness in her heart lasting. She savoured it before she rang Saraneth once more. “I bind you to answer fully and truthfully, Orson Krennic. Who is your master?”

 

His face twisted. “The Emperor.” 

 

“Who are his confederates?”   
  


“The Blackcloak. Tarkin. I know no other names. Dupes and catspaws aplenty - turn over a rock in Belisaere and you’ll find them.”

 

“What are his plans?”   
  


 

“To make the Kingdom his own. To find the queen’s child, and kill it. To make all the world his own - an empire of  _ surpassing  _ glory, a  _ kingdom  _ of power -”

 

“Is that all?”

 

Krennic went from exulting to sullen. “It is what I was told.”

 

“Right,” Jyn said. “We’re done.” 

 

“Enjoy Life,” Krennic said, silkily. “I will go to my death, and whatever awaits me beyond the stars, I will enjoy the wait - I trust very brief - until the day your tormented spirit slips through them, whispering the tortures laid on you by the Blackcloak. He is not an intelligent man, but in some ways… yes, some ways…”   
  


“We’re not that done,” Jyn said, with asperity. “Have you left any traps or caches in Death?”

 

Krennic’s face distorted with rage and he lunged for her; Jyn retreated half a step, the current pulling deceptively at her boots, but he was brought up sharp by Galen’s blade at his chest and the faint echo of Saraneth’s clapper touching the bell metal.

 

“No,” he bit out, furious. “This is not as I planned. My work was not complete.” 

 

“Good,” Jyn said. She sheathed Saraneth, keeping her will concentrated on Krennic and his stillness, and her sword against his insubstantial body. The Charter marks were flaring like molten gold, so bright they left trails on Jyn’s sight, as she pulled Dyrim from its place. “I may be about to accompany you all the way to the Ninth Gate, but I don’t have to listen to you talk every step of the way.”

 

“You bastard  _ bit _ -” Krennic began, but Jyn twitched Dyrim with the slightest movement of her wrist, and let the soft rills of its silver ringing reach out, and silence Krennic forever. 

 

He looked at her like he wanted to rip her throat from her neck, which was just too bad. Jyn grinned at him - wondering as she did so whether it was Lyra’s or Saw’s grin, and if it mattered - and swapped Dyrim for Kibeth, ringing this bell in a slower figure eight to produce a steady marching tune. 

 

“Walk, Orson Krennic,” she said. “Walk all the way to the Ninth Gate and beyond. And do not stop or tarry for anything.”

 

Face contorted, he turned jerkily and marched towards the First Gate. Jyn replaced her bell in her bandolier, took a firmer grip on her sword, and followed him.

 

It was a long way to the Ninth Gate, and she had fought long and hard. But she felt no tiredness until she saw Krennic rise from the water to meet his end among the stars, and their light shone down on her.

 

“Not now,” she said. “Not today.”   
  


She turned and walked back through the eight remaining Gates, as steady and alert as she could make herself, her father’s birthday gift in her hand and her mother’s medallion hanging golden against her bandolier. And when she pushed back through to Life and settled into her body, the ice crackling from her in thin flaking layers, she felt the last of the autumn day’s sun on her face, and heard Bodhi yelling her name.

 

Jyn turned and staggered a little, and then a lot, slipping to sit down hard on Krennic’s leg, which first revolted her and then made her laugh hysterically and then made her want to throw up. She squared the circle by casting the spell to burn his dead body, and then hastily shuffling away and falling back onto her elbows when she misjudged it and he went up in a more significant column of flame than expected. This final spell made her so dizzy that the sky spun, and she slipped from her elbows to her back, head banging uncomfortably onto the stone.

 

Running footsteps approached, and Jyn rolled her head to one side to see Bodhi and Captain Tindall hurl themselves onto the embankment.

 

“I’m not dead,” she croaked helpfully. “Just very tired. Very tired.”   
  
“It’s over?” Bodhi said, falling to his knees beside her.    
  
“It’s over,” Jyn confirmed, and with those words felt a strange heaviness fall over her. Each following sentence came with a heaved breath before the next, as if they took more oxygen than she had left. “It’s over. I have sent him somewhere he can’t come back from. I watched him every step of the way. It’s over.”

 

Captain Tindall swore with obvious relief. Bodhi sat back on his heels and stared at the sky.

 

“Good,” he said, and then “Good,” he repeated, and Jyn looked up at him to see in dim and distant surprise that Bodhi had once more started to cry.

 

***

 

“Cassian’s alive,” Bodhi said, later, when a medic was fussing over Jyn and Bodhi himself had managed to stop crying, with an undignified snort and a rough wiping of his nose over one sleeve; he had taken the vambraces off and done Charter knew what with his knives.

 

“I know,” Jyn said. “Who’s looking after him?”

 

“Your squad,” Bodhi said, “what’s left of them - and Mogget’s sitting with him. Just in case.”

 

Jyn paused at that for a moment, and then nodded in acknowledgement. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. She certainly couldn’t stop Mogget sitting where he pleased. She stared out over the naval dockyard; the sky had been blue, behind Krennic’s spelled clouds, and even with fires lit to destroy the Dead bodies no great pall of smoke had risen.

 

“Your sponsor,” Bodhi said, tentatively.

 

“I know about him, too,” Jyn said tiredly, and closed her eyes as the memory of Saw’s spirit passing into the river slid through her like a knife, as fresh and twice as painful as it had been when it had actually happened. It was nothing like the strange clear knowing that had come on her when her father died. She’d been half berserk, battle mad, and now -

 

“Are you done,” she said to the medic.

 

“You should rest, Abhorsen, ma’am.”

  
  
“Thank you. Help me up.” 

 

The medic did not oblige, but Bodhi and Captain Tindall did, and Jyn limped on jelly-like legs to where Saw’s body had been covered with someone’s great-coat, and a towel of some kind laid over a too-still shape next to him that must be Gullet. She folded down onto her knees and pulled the coat aside. Captain Tindall said something concerned, but she ignored him.

 

Saw looked untouched. He looked old, and sick, and fiercely proud, and someone had closed his eyes for him; or perhaps he had let them fall shut at the last, knowing she had won, and Krennic was dead and gone. The remnants of his faded breathing spell still shone about his chest, faint flickers in the corners of Jyn’s eyes. 

 

Jyn felt a circle of iron and bone close inside her throat, and her eyes stung and blurred painfully. A thousand disconnected thoughts flashed through her head, memories and wishes and a sudden, powerful desire for  _ someone  _ to lean on who didn’t need her protection, but no-one was here except the dead man before her who had loved her as a daughter and followed her to his death.

 

Jyn placed her hands on Saw’s broad stilled chest and let her head bow forward till it touched her knuckles. In the distance, she could hear someone wailing like their world had ended.


	25. Chapter 25

Jyn fell asleep in the back of an ambulance, sitting up with Cassian’s head in her lap, and woke only reluctantly when they arrived at Bain General Hospital. Bodhi later told her that she had frightened the life out of the doctors and nurses - though her military transport hadn’t been much surprised - but that once persuaded she would be allowed to watch over Cassian when his examination had been completed, she calmed, and accepted wheelchair transport to a private room. Where she had fallen asleep once more, and not woken for ten hours, at which point Mogget had leaped onto her stomach, stalked down to her chest, and woken her by demanding to know where he was supposed to obtain fish. 

 

Jyn, who was disorientated in the extreme, looked around the room and realised that it was probably not actually a private room but a small ward. Cassian was lying in a bed not far from her own, pale and silent but breathing with reassuring steadiness, and Bodhi had a cot-bed available to him but had actually fallen asleep in an overstuffed chintz armchair.

 

Jyn’s stomach told her she had not eaten in far too long. The light filtering through the curtains told her it was late morning - possibly very late morning.

 

“You’re welcome for saving your life,” Mogget said snidely. “Now, if you could apply your brain to the problem…  _ Fish _ .”

 

Jyn swore at him, and reached unsteadily for a bell. It was small and brass and it tinkled in a way that made Jyn realise she had a headache, but it brought a nurse along very promptly. Quite a senior-looking one, too, with a red band to the stiff white cap on her head, and a little silver watch pinned to her white apron. 

 

She spoke with a northern accent, and called Jyn ‘Abhorsen’, not ‘Miss Erso’. It made Jyn’s head swim.

 

“I would like something to eat, please,” Jyn said, and added: “And if there’s a tin of tuna or sardines or something around, I’m sure my cat would appreciate it very much.”

 

The nurse’s suppressed sign against evil suggested that she knew exactly how much of a cat Mogget was, but she was very kind about Jyn’s request, and promptly brought Jyn water, tea, toast and fruit, and a small saucer of tinned tuna and some water for Mogget. Jyn had had time to think about everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours by the time the nurse got back, which made her want to lie still and close her eyes just as Nurse Kalmon was jollying her into sitting up and eating her nice breakfast and wasn’t it beautiful weather today. Jyn tried to reply, but couldn’t.

 

She kept thinking of Saw, who had refused to stay behind, and who had died. She kept thinking of that death ship, and of the fall, and of the look on Krennic’s face when she forced his eyes to the stars. The ice that she had shed, and Cassian, breathing, barely.

 

Nurse Kalmon squeaked and jumped on the way out, causing Bodhi to start awake with a snort of surprise. Jyn sighed.

 

“Mogget!”

 

“What?” Mogget said, with an air of innocent injury. “I only winked.”

 

From wanting to lie down and go to sleep and pretend there was nothing left to deal with, Jyn became suddenly quite keen to get up and stagger outside. She explored the room under Bodhi’s watchful eye - they had put her things, weapons included, in a tall thin cupboard, and although a laundress had clearly taken a stab at the surcoat and soft clothing her armour and weapons had been left untouched. Both sets of bells were sealed in a padlocked box marked  _ Northern Perimeter Reconnaissance Unit _ ; she felt briefly panicked, but then Bodhi silently handed her a book that had been left on her bedside. It was a monograph:  _ Recent Strategic History of the Northern Perimeter _ , by General Ackbar, with so many fuzzy red RESTRICTED stamps on it Jyn could almost see the panic of the Army censor.

 

Jyn flipped the book open, and found a compliments slip with polite wishes for her swift recovery, written out in one hand and signed in a second - Colonel Raddus’s slapdash but definite signature. When she turned the book upside down and shook it, a key fell out of a series of heavier printed pages, ones that contained photographs. It matched the box, which let Jyn check that the bells were untouched and undamaged. They had been carefully packed in kapok, in case they should somehow manage to ring. Sensible.

 

Out of curiosity, Jyn looked at the photographs, and discovered that the key had been left there on purpose. A landscape portrait of the author with his officers’ mess, including the young Captain Raddus, occupied one full leaf. On another, someone had taken an action shot of two young officers giving orders during a live-fire drill, and though his hair was shorter and his profile keener Jyn could hardly have failed to recognise Saw. A third photograph was an aerial image, unaccountably poorly exposed over the Wall and parts beyond, but perfectly clear of the Perimeter. The fourth was captioned simply   _ Cross-border relations _ , with no names or identifying details. Unlike the other, it was possible to identify the Wall in the distance. It was very blurred, but three figures facing away from the camera were nonetheless discernible - a man, tall and broad-shouldered, with his back to the camera and something long in his hands that you might have called a rifle if you had never seen a wind flute. A second man stood on his left, turned towards the third figure, sufficient detail present to identify him as an Ancelstierran Army officer, of the Crossing Point Scouts. The third could have been a woman or a man, the photograph lacked so much detail, but they wore a long tabard and had their dark hair back in a queue. The hip pointing away from the camera was cocked into some weight slung into their right arm: perhaps a child.

 

Jyn closed the book with a snap and wondered what Colonel Raddus meant her to take from this, except perhaps the knowledge that her parents and Saw had been alive and whole once. It was all so long in the past. 

 

Bitterness welled up in her. She threw the book onto her bed instead of punching a wall. 

 

“Uh, I think he meant well.” Bodhi coughed. “Nurse Kalmon objected to his leaving flowers - not sanitary.”

 

“I want to walk a bit,” Jyn said, and hobbled out without further apology. She was extremely stiff. 

 

She made it all the way into a quiet and reflective garden, where other people with hesitant steps were trying their toes out. By chance or intended kindness she had been given a room which faced north, with the windows open to let the breeze in, but the sunlight felt better than the weakened Charter magic so far south as Bain. Real and alive.

 

Jyn sat on a bench and turned her face into its rays. When Bodhi came to find her, saying Nurse Kalmon had decreed lunch, she was able to walk back to the room without clutching at either handrails or Bodhi.

 

Cassian was still sleeping. The doctors, Nurse Kalmon said, bringing Jyn restoring slices of roast beef and rather small roast potatoes with a depressingly large volume of mashed peas, expected him to sleep the day out at least. He had done himself quite a mischief - but it was all bad bruising, they thought, miraculously. No broken bones.

 

Jyn zigzagged from nausea to euphoria and back again over the course of three sentences, which left her resting her head against the pillows and blinking spots from her vision. 

 

“Now there is a lawyer to see you,” Nurse Kalmon said, obliging her to drink a strengthening tonic that made her feel very much as if she were twelve and stuck in the Wyverley sanitarium with the exhausting aftermath of the measles. “I’m not sure it’s a very wise idea, but Doctor says you are going on very well, and will be perfectly up to dealing with it.”

 

Jyn sighed. “Do I have to see him?”

 

“Not now,” Nurse Kalmon said, clearly meaning  _ if not now, then later _ . 

 

“Then please let him in,” Jyn said, and added without particular graciousness: “Thank you.”

 

The lawyer was Saw’s, and he brought with him a number of papers that made Jyn’s head ache so much that Bodhi and Nurse Kalmon escorted him out, equally rigid with disapproval. The only fact that stuck with Jyn was that she was the sole beneficiary of Saw’s estate, and the mere fact of Saw having an estate of any kind rendered her stupid with surprise and scepticism until she realised that what he meant was the cottage, and the car, and the little remnants of Saw’s solitary life, and then she wanted to be sick. Nurse Kalmon brought her ice chips and a cool cloth. Bodhi, with brutal practicality, brought her a bucket. 

 

Unfortunately, the lawyer’s being allowed in opened the floodgates on a stream of other interested parties. Journalists, who Nurse Kalmon threw out and threatened with lawsuits; suited men from Corvere who wanted to know if this meant the Regency was going to invade and whether Ancelstierre should offer state aid for stabilisation (Jyn, identifying the latter as a stalking horse for interfering in the Old Kingdom, told them no to both questions and didn’t call Mogget off when he got white fur all over their grey pinstripes and clawed their ankles). A runner from the Crossing Point Scouts to see how she did; a party of her schoolfriends from Wyverley College who found her very dull and uncommunicative; and perhaps worst of all, a representative from the Admiralty.

 

By this point in time, Jyn was lying flat on her back with the cool cloth over her eyes, returning monosyllabic answers to questions. The representative from the Admiralty did not like this. Nailed to the uncomfortable visitors’ chair by Bodhi and Nurse Kalmon’s twin stares, and unnerved by Cassian’s unconscious presence, he was unwilling to push for more.

 

“... and what did you do with the ship?”

 

Jyn moved the cloth off her face. “The ship?”

 

“The, er.” He read off his notes. “Full-rigged three-masted wooden galleon trimmed in red and gold with a brown-haired lady wearing blue as the figurehead, crewed by…” his voice failed. “Fully crewed.”

 

“No idea. Doesn’t belong to me.” Jyn moved the cloth back onto her face. 

 

“It’s disappeared. It vanished at nightfall. Straight out of a packed naval dockyard. Sails, hands, and ship all together.”

 

“Well, that solves that, doesn’t it?”

 

“Fifty-ton wooden galleons don’t just disappear, madam.”

 

“ _ Abhorsen _ ,” Nurse Kalmon and  Bodhi chorused, united in their disapproval. Jyn refused to say anything more, and at length he went away.

  
  


Cassian woke screaming in the middle of the night, which made Jyn and Bodhi alike fall out of bed, and the night nurse come running in from her station down the corridor. Scrambling to her feet and launching herself over to Cassian, Jyn pushed past Bodhi and grabbed Cassian’s hands. His eyelids were stuck shut with sleep, fluttering frantically as he tried to wrench them open, and he was calling for Kay and for Jyn with almost equal frequency. 

 

“I’ll fetch Doctor Marrowville,” decided the nurse, this one a southerner, and nervous of them all. 

 

“No need, I think,” Bodhi said. “I think he’s had a nightmare.”

 

“The light,” Cassian croaked, fingers clutching spasmodically at Jyn’s, “the light -”

 

“He thinks he’s blind,” Jyn realised. “He thinks the light blinded him. Nurse -”

 

But she turned around and the nurse was gone.

 

“Very, uh,  _ twitchy _ people, these Ancelstierrans,” Bodhi said with a faint air of judgement, .switching the bright overhead light for the softer one near Jyn and Cassian’s beds so that Cassian wouldn’t be struck by the glare when he got his eyes open.

 

“She just isn’t used to people like us.” Jyn sat down on the edge of Cassian’s bed, instead of half-crouching uncomfortably. “Shh, Cassian, stop trying to move, you bruised your back.”

 

“Jyn,” Cassian said, with a depth of relief in his voice that made Jyn’s heart twist. “It’s over? It’s finished?”

 

“I killed Krennic and walked him to the Ninth Gate and beyond, so yes, it’s over.” Jyn watched two little lines she hadn’t even really noticed were there before smooth out between Cassian’s eyebrows. He still had his hands wrapped in hers; she rubbed her thumbs over the knuckles, and watched him relax a little.

 

The nurse returned with a bowl of warm water and cotton swabs, and frowned at Jyn. “You shouldn’t be out of bed, Miss Erso. Sister Kalmon said you had a terrible headache earlier.”

 

“I did. And then the lawyers went away and I slept for a while, and now I feel much, much better.” 

 

The nurse looked like she was about to object. Bodhi relieved her of the bowl and swabs, and handed both to Jyn, before courteously escorting the nurse out by her elbow, like a fine lady who had wandered into the wrong room. “Thanks so much for checking on us,” he said earnestly. “We’ll take it from here.”

 

If she had any objections, the door swung shut on them. Jyn didn’t look round to see. She was already wiping the crust of sleep from Cassian’s eyes, probably too hasty and too rough, but before she knew it, Cassian was blinking his eyes open and looking up at her, dark and woozy still from tiredness and from the painkillers they had given him for his back. She knew the moment he put her together as more than just movement and sound, because he smiled, and her heart did this uncomfortable double-thump warming thing that made her smile stupidly back. 

 

Bodhi muttered something and retreated to his cot-bed. 

 

“Both of you go to sleep,” he said. “See how everything looks in the morning.”

  
  


In the morning, Jyn got a polite note from Colonel Raddus with her breakfast, reminding her of the date of the next full moon. The note also alluded to a Certain Guest, which Jyn took to mean that Kay was hanging around in full view of the Forward Observation Post, wearing out his welcome.

 

“ _ Damn _ it!” Jyn said, outraging another nurse, and spent the next few hours making notes with Bodhi. It did at least take her mind off Cassian, who had been hoisted off on a gurney (to his distinct displeasure) to a physiotherapist who wanted to carry out some tests on his back, and who didn’t return until after they had reluctantly agreed that Jyn and Bodhi should go to the Wall - Bodhi to fly Kay to the House or some other place of safety, and Jyn to start refreshing the spells on the wind flutes. Both of them were reasonably confident that the wood of the flutes themselves didn’t need to be immediately replaced: new spells on the old wood would hold for a couple of years at least, giving Jyn time to return and do a thorough overhaul.

 

Cassian didn’t like this idea of splitting up any more than they did, though he didn’t consider his own vulnerability a reason to be concerned; he was more worried about Jyn expending her energy on fixing wind flutes, and Bodhi going north alone. Bodhi won the argument by pointing out that this way he could get at least one Paperwing and Kay out of the way of the Ancelstierran military. Both were likely safe with the Scouts, even the inquisitive Lieutenant Jorbert, but if someone else were to get wind of them it might be a different matter. 

 

Nurse Kalmon telephoned through to ask if the Abhorsen could visit after lunch. Colonel Raddus, most obligingly, sent a car. Jyn deduced that the wind was blowing full south, and left Mogget watching over Cassian.

 

The atmosphere at the Perimeter was warmer and more welcoming than she remembered. She and Bodhi were met by Captain Tindall, to the goggling curiosity of a party of tourists, and given a leisurely tour of selected parts of the Perimeter which fetched neatly up at the Forward Observation Point, where Colonel Raddus was waiting with a set of binoculars and some paperwork abandoned on a desk. He seemed to be scrutinising the Wall itself, rather than the torn-up ground of the Perimeter.

 

“Thank you for the loan of the book,” Jyn said, laying it down on the desk. “I’m afraid the flowers were confiscated as unhygienic.” Although she wasn’t sure that was what it was really, since her schoolfriends’ offering was currently flourishing in a vase on the bedside table.

 

“Glad to see you on your feet, Abhorsen,” Colonel Raddus. “Captain Tindall will be pleased to see the book made it through to you.” Jyn did not look back over her shoulder. “I hope Captain Andor is recovering? That wasn’t a nice fall.”

 

“He was lucky - it was only bruising.” Jyn closed her eyes against the memory of their bodies whistling through the air towards an unforgiving ground. “They sedated him. He woke yesterday and they’ve taken him off for physiotherapy this morning, but they expect a complete recovery.”

 

“Good,” Colonel Raddus said heartily. “Army HQ were a little confused by goings-on up here, but since they’re confused by a stiff northern breeze it didn’t take much to settle them down. I hope you won’t mind that I described Captain Andor as a representative of the Regency assisting you in bringing this… terrorist… to justice.”

 

Jyn gave a real, sinus-clearing snort of amusement, which she refused either to apologise for or to elaborate on. Colonel Raddus smiled. 

 

“I don’t know if you will necessarily be feeling well enough to deal with the wind flutes,” he said delicately, clearly looking at Jyn sideways. It was possible he was trying to be discreet, but his rather bulbous eyes were obvious. 

 

“Bodhi and I have been working on the problem and we think I can do an initial replacement of the spells, and come back later to do a full replacement of the flutes,” Jyn said, nodding at Bodhi. “By our calculations, the flutes themselves should still be viable for another few years.”

 

“Excellent news,” Colonel Raddus said. “And do you think you’ll be up to that?”

 

“Well, I don’t know if I can do all of it today, or even tomorrow,” Jyn said cautiously. “Bodhi is going to fly Kay north, so he can deal with some… business -” So we can get him away from Ancelstierre, she meant - “and flying a Paperwing takes considerable energy. So I will probably need to do it all myself.”

 

“Oh, God,” Captain Tindall said faintly. “No.”

 

“Tindall!” Colonel Raddus barked, at the same time as Jyn led off with a furious “I beg your pardon,” before they both swivelled to find Captain Tindall staring out of the window through a pair of binoculars. 

 

“Another, er, Paperwing,” said Captain Tindall. “Excuse me, Abhorsen, Colonel, sir. But there’s another Paperwing.” He learned forward slightly, imperceptibly, as if it would help him see better. “It’s… green and silver?”

 

“The Clayr!” Jyn commandeered a pair of binoculars ruthlessly, and glared out into the sky until she found a Paperwing looping slowly down on the other side of the Wall. She fumbled with the settings until the pilots’ faces sprung into view, and then nearly dropped the binoculars, she was so suddenly delighted. “Yes! Don’t worry about your wind flutes, Colonel Raddus. They’ll be finished before you can say glider!”

 

“You know these people?” Colonel Raddus demanded, still face-forward over the filthy mud and the smooth-hewn stones of the Wall far ahead. He had pinched Captain Tindall’s binoculars, and Captain Tindall was looking rather forlorn. 

 

“They’re sort of cousins of mine,” Jyn said, and then tried to think of words to make the Clayr’s Glacier understandable to Ancelstierrans. “From a community of seers, in the far north. And they’re both very powerful Charter mages.”

 

“Cousins,” Colonel Raddus said, sounding a bit stunned. “Seers. You know, Abhorsen, I insist on seeing this myself.”

 

“Sir,” Captain Tindall said, obviously despairing.

 

“It won’t kill you, Tindall.”

 

It took a long time to organise Colonel Raddus’ crossing the Wall. Obviously Army HQ had cold, if not actually frozen, feet. Jyn found herself going ahead with Captain Tindall, Bodhi having been accosted by the irrepressible Lieutenant Jorbert and his mania for flying machines, to take an advance party out. She recognised more than a few of them: a grumpy corporal, a boyish private, Sergeant Hardison, who sneaked her a salute as she went past and a wink in return for her unrepentant grin.

 

“Friend of yours?” Captain Tindall asked, checking over his weapons. Jyn brushed a hand over her bells and a thumb over the sapphire in the pommel of her sword. 

 

“Friend of my godfather’s,” she said.

 

“Saw Gerrera.” Captain Tindall nodded, and bellowed for someone to open the gates. “He had quite the reputation; you must have been very proud of him. I’m sorry for your loss.”

 

Jyn nodded. Her throat hurt again, the same way it had when she’d known she’d killed her mother’s murderers, the same way it had for her father’s death: she wondered when it would stop. The more she thought about Saw, the more the remembered every small thing he’d given her; every shooting lesson, every cup of cocoa, every unsympathetic hangover cure. 

 

“I’m lucky to have known him,” she said. The gate creaked open before them. “I don’t know what I would have done without family in Ancelstierre.”

 

“You’ll still visit, I imagine - to see friends?”

 

Jyn glanced sideways at Captain Tindall, and thought about flowers that hadn’t made it to her, and the seeking out of a book with her family in. It was a nice try, and once she might have been interested, but she couldn’t think of anything she cared about less now. “Some of my schoolfriends came to see me,” she offered. “We didn’t understand each other well. But I’m not sure we did before, either.”

 

Captain Tindall nodded in acknowledgement and some kind of understanding, and said nothing more for a bit as they walked slowly out of the great gateway. 

 

“Captain Andor is doing better, I hope?” he said casually, after a while. “His friend has been very concerned about him.”

 

“Annoyed to be stuck in bed,” Jyn said. “But he’ll be more annoyed to learn Kay’s been bothering you.”

 

“It’s understandable. But perhaps if we can give him good news, he’ll stop ambushing patrols.”

 

Jyn winced, and was unsurprised that the next thing she heard was “There you are! Jyn Erso! What have you done with Cassian?”

 

“Taken him to hospital,” Jyn said stolidly, waving back the various soldiers who lifted their rifles as Kay loped over. “He needed it. He’s only bruised, though, so he should be up and about soon. In the meantime, Bodhi needs your help to get some stuff north.”

 

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t wait.”

 

Jyn eyed Kay, who was showing the ill effects of several days in the wind and rain. “Because you can’t wash but you might as well do laundry,” she said finally, startling a stifled choke of laughter from Captain Tindall and several ill-concealed snorts from the men. She twisted round and looked about for Bodhi, and found him walking just slightly faster than Lieutenant Jorbert, lips folded together and eyes screaming forbearance. “Here’s Bodhi, you can talk to him all about it.”

 

“Bodhi,” Kay began, in his peculiarly piercing voice, and Jyn slipped past him and hurried towards the green and silver Paperwing, not far away. Captain Tindall hung back a little, but she knew he wasn’t far behind, and that his men stood ready to react.

 

Baze was still fiddling with the Paperwing, uttering imprecations in a variety of languages, only some of which Jyn recognised. But Chirrut - wearing green and silver and a spotless white tabard, and a moonstone circlet on his smiling brow - had climbed out ahead, and opened his arms to Jyn. 

 

“Little sister,” he said. “It is a long way from here to the Glacier, isn’t it?”

 

“Was I right about Andor or was I right?” Baze bellowed, finally jumping down from the Paperwing. “He has the face of a friend.”

 

Jyn laughed helplessly, and then, burying her head in Chirrut’s shoulder, she cried.

  
  


It took some time to get Chirrut and Baze to the other side of the Wall. For one, there were politics and paperwork involved, and crossing permits to worry about. In the end Colonel Raddus wrote them temporary permits on compassionate grounds, a bureaucratic novelty dug up by a triumphant Captain Tindall, and they moved the remaining Paperwings out of the way of the gate and threw some tarps over them to make them less noticeable. Secondly, Chirrut and Baze insisted on a long conference with Bodhi, whose eyes went wholly round as he spoke to them, and who nodded rather shakenly; then they insisted on speaking to Kay, too, who said loudly “No, of course not,” and “Obviously he can’t take care of himself,” and “Cassian will understand,” which reduced Jyn to a fever pitch of curiosity (and strong concern). Neither explained as they said goodbye to Jyn. Kay gave her a long list of instructions for Cassian’s welfare that Jyn was sure would have mortified Cassian, and Bodhi hugged her very tightly, before leaning back and giving her a strange, searching look. 

 

“You do look like Galen,” he said. “You have the same eyes.”

 

Jyn’s eyes had finally turned dark with her sojourning in Death. She raised her eyebrows, let her face twist.

 

“I don’t mean the colour,” Bodhi said, smiling faintly, and left before Jyn could ask him what he meant or where he was going. 

 

Jyn put the question to Baze and Chirrut instead, watching Bodhi and Kay’s Paperwing spiral into the sky with a strange, unfair feeling of abandonment.

 

“Nestowe,” Chirrut said tranquilly. “Bodhi Rook will be the next Wallmaker. We have Seen it.” He turned and smiled kindly at Jyn, who was busy choking on her own breath. “And we have Seen that you need us, too.” 

 

Baze patted her comfortingly on the shoulder. It might have come with a little more force than he intended. “Put us to work, Abhorsen.”

  
  


It wasn’t until later - much, much later, when Jyn had completed the first tenth of the wind flutes with wavering strength and Baze’s anchoring hand on her shoulder, when Sergeant Hardison had seen them back to the hospital with a wink for Baze just like the one Jyn had received, when Cassian had been discharged and taken back to Saw’s old cottage under Jyn and her cousins’ care, a fire lit, dinner eaten - that Baze and Chirrut told her the real reason why they had come south. Or another reason, perhaps. Not the only.

 

“We have Seen you and Captain Andor again,” Chirrut said, finishing his toasted cheese and gingerbread with every evidence of delight. “And what’s more, we’ve seen the lady Leia.”

 

Jyn straightened, and so did Cassian, in his comfortable armchair. It made him wince; she laid an absent-minded hand on his knee. “My father told me he thinks she knows something - about Queen Padmé’s child. He thought the baby lived. Suppose they must be my age, if that’s true.”

 

“Well, we think it too.” Chirrut nodded to Baze, who got up and left the room. “The vision suggests that Lady Leia will be north of the Bridge very soon, with a northern clansman about her own age. Strangely, he has been Charter-baptised.”

 

“That is unusual,” Cassian said, frowning. He stretched out one leg after the other, slowly and carefully. “They don’t hold to the Charter, in the north. It’s weak above the Greenwash.”

 

“However that may be,” Chirrut said, “he was Charter-baptised, and she was there.” Baze came back into the room carrying a leather tube, which he opened, revealing two heavy pieces of paper with detailed pen-and-ink illustrations on them. Jyn cleared the tea things off the coffee-table, and wiped it down rather haphazardly with a scorched tea-towel. The drawings’ edges kept curling up as Baze laid them out, so she weighted them down with flotsam and jetsam from Saw’s desk: a heavy clasp-knife, a strangely weighty little enamelled box from far-off lands, something that looked suspiciously like a broken fragment of Charter stone, and a well-polished deactivated grenade. Cassian inched forward: Jyn pushed the table closer towards him.

 

 “We also Saw you,” Chirrut added. “You were crossing the Greenwash at the Bridge. Baze, show them.”

 

“I am showing them,” Baze grumbled. Jyn grinned at him, and leant forward on her knees to examine the illustrations as closely as possible.

 

They both had a strange, eerie life to them; as if the person who had drawn them and washed them with colour had really been present, standing on the flagstones of the Bridge or the high mountains of the far north. Jyn had never even seen a picture of Leia Organa, but Cassian’s slight intake of breath suggested that the likeness of a slim, round-cheeked girl in a stained travelling robe and boots, with a stubborn pointy chin and her hair in two practical buns, was as lively as the likenesses of Cassian and Jyn themselves in the other drawing. Jyn was startled to recognise herself, with her newly darkened hair and eyes, and pleased to see that Cassian was standing straight and looked strong. He was dressed in a Regency olive tabard over a gethre hauberk very similar to her own, trimmed in dark Abhorsen blue and nothing like the armour he had worn before; she kept her eyes forward and didn’t comment on it.

 

She focused on Lady Leia and the clansman with her. They were similarly dressed, though his travelling robe was shorter and he wore a cap instead of a hood - the cap pushed far enough back on his head that she could see both the Charter mark on his forehead and his tousled, corn-blonde hair. He looked very angry, though not at Lady Leia; there was smoke rising in the background, coming from a tented village. It didn’t look as if the smoke came from a cook-fire.

 

“Not promising,” Cassian said grimly, and Jyn knew he was thinking the same thing she was.

 

Jyn ran her thumb lightly over the boy’s face, with its broad high cheekbones and stubborn pointy chin, and frowned. “Are there blondes among the clans? I thought they all had dark or black hair?”   
  


“It shows up sometimes in one or two of the more isolated clans,” Baze said. “It’s not common, but it’s not unknown.”

 

“Do you know when these visions take place?” Cassian asked. Jyn pressed her lips together, and wondered how long it would take them both to heal well enough to leave and travel north - a journey that could take months, if they were not able to take the Paperwing.

 

“The vision of the lady and her companion, within the month,” Baze said, but he sounded doubtful. 

 

Chirrut hummed and nodded, shifting on the sofa he had commandeered and steepling his fingers. “It seems to precede the other… slightly. By days - perhaps a week - or even a little longer. It was further north, and our Sight is weaker there, and harder to focus. But by our best calculations, you were crossing the Bridge in a few weeks’ time. We would advise you to make it soon, and to travel fast.”

 

“When Cassian has recovered,” Jyn said automatically.

 

“I’ll be fine,” Cassian said, equally automatically.

 

They stared at each other, temporarily outraged, and then Jyn reddened and looked away, putting her eyes anywhere but Baze and Chirrut’s knowing faces, or Cassian’s too-soft one. 

 

“It’s not today’s problem,” Baze rumbled. “Now you can rest. You’ve earned it.”

 

Jyn felt herself sag a little in her chair, automatically, and felt Cassian’s foot nudge hers, just checking. She smiled at him, and then let her eyes roam round the room. It was missing something, but it was not empty. And she still had her memories, and her sword, and the Charter medallion Nurse Kalmon had stopped the southern nurses removing from around her neck.

 

_ With you or not - you will always have me. _

 

_ My clever stardust. _

 

_ I love you… Trust the Charter. _

 

Jyn heaved herself out of her chair before any more feelings could arise. “Anyone else want some cocoa?”

 

“Is it alcoholic?” Chirrut asked cheerfully. “It sounds like it.”

 

Jyn felt her laugh bubble up from her chest, and though it felt strange, it was no longer rusty. “It can be.”


	26. Epilogue

Wyverley College was quiet during lessons. The classrooms, of course, were full and busy - Jyn heard language lessons, passages of poetry being recited, the distinctive sound of a young Charter mage gargling on a mark slightly too strong for them. But the heavy wooden doors muffled sound, and the only other footsteps in the corridors were those of prefects and occasional teachers, who glanced at Jyn and Cassian as if they were trying not to stare.

 

Jyn was carrying a small trunk containing her remaining belongings. Mrs Umbrade had not been impressed that Cassian was carrying nothing, but Mrs Umbrade wasn’t privy to the slow healing of Cassian’s damaged back, and Jyn had no intention of wasting her time making excuses to the woman. Mrs Umbrade had been kind, in her way, for a time. Now, making her way through the sunlit corridors and down the scuffed stairs of Wyverley College, Jyn felt only a distant nostalgia for the girl who had needed the headmistress’s kindness to move in this small, circumscribed world. It had only been a month or so since she had driven herself and Cassian to the Wall, but that time felt impossibly far away to Jyn.

 

She’d donated all her school uniform to the second-hand box and cancelled her attendance for the remainder of the year. She wouldn’t be coming back.

 

Saw’s car was outside, the keys jingling in her pocket, and Saw’s little cottage stood empty in the lanes near Wyverley, still redolent with menthol cigarettes and heavily sprinkled with Gullet’s fur - and it always would stand empty, until the lawyer executing Saw’s will managed to sell or rent it. Apparently the proceeds would be hers, along with Saw’s remaining savings, and the residue of his pension until she turned twenty-one, but Jyn tried not to think about that. It made her choke, the same way the plates in the sink and the leftovers in the pantry had made her choke, and the picture of Lyra Erso laughing over a much younger Saw dressed in a Scout’s uniform, his eyes perplexed, his arms wrapped a little too tightly around a toddler Jyn. Saw had left his cottage to help her, and he had meant all the time to return, and yet he had made plans in case he did not. Plans designed to help her. She hadn’t realised until he was gone how much of his life had been organised around protecting her. 

 

Jyn’s eyes watered whenever she thought of him, and this time she paused by a window and turned her face into the sun so that she had an excuse.

 

“Jyn,” Cassian said, and touched her shoulder lightly. It stood to reason that of all the men in the world she couldn’t pretend in front of this one.

 

“Just thinking,” Jyn said, as if that was all there was to it. Cassian looked unconvinced.

 

Baze and Chirrut had stayed for two weeks out of the three Jyn and Cassian had spent in Ancelstierre, sleeping in Saw’s old bedroom while Jyn and Cassian took the one that had been reserved for Jyn’s childhood visits, with its wonkily knitted blue comforter and the mirror Jyn had never bothered with. At the end of the fortnight the doctors declared Cassian’s back could heal by itself from now on, and Jyn had finished the wind flutes and recovered far enough to snap at Mogget when he said something cunningly rude, and drive into the town to buy him begrudging tins of sardines. Baze and Chirrut had been there the whole time, watching over Jyn, distracting Cassian, carrying the weight of Jyn’s occasional angry outbursts and Cassian’s suppressed fear about his back. 

 

In the present day, Jyn loaded her trunk into the back of the car with their packs and the few things she had taken from Saw’s. The comforter, which she had once detested, and which Mogget now liked to sleep on. Saw’s Scout’s cap. She had wanted to take the picture of Saw and her mother, but it would have rotted; she left it with the lawyer unspooling Saw’s orderly affairs, and kept a copy she had drawn.

 

Cassian was already sitting in the front seat of the car, thinking too hard. He and Baze and Chirrut had had a lot of conversations that Jyn had, at first, been too stunned by grief and exhaustion to follow for more than a few minutes at a time. She had picked words like  _ queen _ and  _ north  _ and  _ Great Charters _ out of the flow, and decided it was a problem for later. But by the time Baze and Chirrut had left, she had been feeling better, so the last week had been spent picking over the visions the Clayr had already told her about and snippets of fact that they had been speculating on with Cassian, and deciding what they would do next.

 

“Next stop, Leia Organa,” Jyn said, settling behind the steering wheel.

 

Cassian twitched.

 

“You had that look on your face.” 

 

“What look?”

 

“It’s a kind of scowl. You’ll have to take my word for it.” Jyn tangled her fingers with his, and awarded herself a point when Cassian gave her a fleeting smile. 

 

“You spend that much time looking at my face?”

 

“It’s a nice face.” Jyn leaned over and kissed Cassian on the cheek, just to watch him turn pink around the ears. “And when you’re plotting, it shows.”

 

“Leia Organa is our best lead.” Cassian frowned out of the windscreen, and smoothed his thumb softly over the back of Jyn’s hand. “Not just because I want to find her. Lord Bail and Lady Breha...”

 

“Yeah, I know.” 

 

The smile Cassian gave her was tight with a pain that didn’t come from his back, but when he kissed her knuckles and released her hand his touch was soft.

 

“Someone must have seen her leave Alderaan,” Cassian said. “She’s not very subtle. She must have been moving slowly, to take this long to get north of the Bridge: she may have stopped to hide somewhere.”

 

Jyn put the car in gear and eased out of Wyverley’s grounds, braking briefly for a small girl chasing her pet rabbit across the drive. “If the Clayr Saw her north of the Bridge, there are only so many roads she can have taken.”

 

Cassian nodded. 

 

“We’ll find her.” Jyn drove down the lane towards Wyverley village’s main street. “And then we’ll find out whatever it is she knows about Queen Padmé and the Kingdom’s last rightful heir.”

 

“Probably very little,” Cassian said dourly. “How much can Lord Bail have told her?”

 

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Jyn said, and snorted. “Literally.”

 

Cassian sighed deeply.

 

Jyn grinned. She turned the car north and took the road for the Wall.


End file.
